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David Warren has Libya concerns.
As the days pass, and the intervention in Libya grows longer, my alarm also grows. The West digs itself into a position that is contrary to western interests, and can only advance the interests of our worst enemies in the Middle East. If I were to characterize the effect of the intervention – the actual as opposed to the stated effect – it would be, “Making the world safe for Islamism.” …
… now we are doing something more profoundly senseless. In the name of a “humanitarianism” that is not thought through, we are subtly joining forces with so-called “moderate” Islamists against isolated secular tyrants. We have foreign services sending feelers out to Islamist opponents of every Arab regime, in the name of “democracy” and “inclusivity.”
From Obama down through the liberal intelligentsia we have blather about how the Muslim Brotherhood is “evolving” -as it embraces the tactical devices of modern Western political parties, from women’s groups and youth clubs to electronic media and studied efforts by spokesmen to appear “cool.” Yet all this remains in the service of a political ideology that is unambiguously committed to the spread of Shariah, and the destruction of us.
This is a very old story: the ability of the liberal mind to delude itself by confusing appearances with realities; by embracing the comfortably plausible in preference to the uncomfortably true. And finally, expressing genuine surprise when the whole effort blows up in our faces.
Charles Krauthammer comments on the “Professor’s War”.
President Obama is proud of how he put together the Libyan operation. A model of international cooperation. All the necessary paperwork. Arab League backing. A Security Council resolution. (Everything but a resolution from the Congress of the United States, a minor inconvenience for a citizen of the world.) It’s war as designed by an Ivy League professor.
True, it took three weeks to put this together, during which time Moammar Gaddafi went from besieged, delusional (remember those youthful protesters on “hallucinogenic pills”) thug losing support by the hour — to resurgent tyrant who marshaled his forces, marched them to the gates of Benghazi and had the U.S. director of national intelligence predicting that “the regime will prevail.”
But what is military initiative and opportunity compared with paper?
Well, let’s see how that paper multilateralism is doing. …
It may not be mission creep, but the administration’s language is turning it into a creepy mission. Rick Richman in Contentions.
Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes was asked “if it’s not a war, what’s the right way to characterize this operation?”
MR. RHODES: … I think what we’ve said is that this is a military operation that will be limited in both duration and scope. Our contribution to this military operation that is enforcing a U.N. Security Council resolution is going to be limited — time limited to the front end, and then we’ll shift to a support role. …
Q But it’s not going to war, then?
MR. RHODES: Well, again, I think what we are doing is enforcing a resolution that has a very clear set of goals, which is protecting the Libyan people, averting a humanitarian crisis, and setting up a no-fly zone. Obviously that involves kinetic military action, particularly on the front end. …
So it’s not a war; it’s a kinetic military action that is time-limited and contribution-limited on the front end.
More from Contentions on “kinetic military action” from Peter Wehner.
Rick does a fine job of highlighting the Obama administration’s use of phrases like “kinetic military action, particularly on the front end” in lieu of the word “war.” But this silly semantic game, which serves to obfuscate rather than to clarify, reveals two things that are, I think, disturbing.
The first is that confused language is often a manifestation of confused thoughts, and that’s certainly what we have with the Obama administration’s strategy (I used the word loosely) in Libya. …
… Second, the president, having committed the U.S. to the conflict in Libya, is deeply ambivalent about it. He’s in, but only partially in, and boy does he want out. He’s like a guy who felt obligated to propose to a woman and regretted it the minute the words had passed his lips.v…
Last on kinetics from Mark Steyn.
It is tempting and certainly very easy to point out that Obama’s war (or Obama’s “kinetic military action,” or “time-limited, scope-limited military action,” or whatever the latest ever more preposterous evasion is) is at odds with everything candidate Obama said about U.S. military action before his election. And certainly every attempt the president makes to explain his Libyan adventure is either cringe-makingly stupid (“I’m accustomed to this contradiction of being both a commander-in-chief but also somebody who aspires to peace”) or alarmingly revealing of a very peculiar worldview:
“That’s why building this international coalition has been so important,” he said the other day. “It is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions that are important not only to us, but are important internationally.”
That’s great news. Who doesn’t enjoy volunteering other people? The Arab League, for reasons best known to itself, decided that Col. Gadhafi had outlived his sell-by date. Granted that the region’s squalid polities haven’t had a decent military commander since King Hussein fired General Sir John Glubb half-a-century back, how difficult could it be even for Arab armies to knock off a psychotic transvestite guarded by Austin Powers fembots? But no: Instead, the Arab League decided to volunteer the U.S. military.
Likewise, the French and the British. Libya’s special forces are trained by Britain’s SAS. Four years ago, President Sarkozy hosted a state visit for Col. Gadhafi, his personal security detail of 30 virgins, his favorite camel and a 400-strong entourage that helped pitch his tent in the heart of Paris. Given that London and Paris have the third- and fourth-biggest military budgets on the planet and that between them they know everything about Gadhafi’s elite troops, sleeping arrangements, guard-babes and dromedaries, why couldn’t they take him out? But no: They, too, decided to volunteer the U.S. military.
But, as I said, it’s easy to mock the smartest, most articulate man ever to occupy the Oval Office. Instead, in a nonpartisan spirit, let us consider why it is that the United States no longer wins wars. …
Speaking of NewSpeak, Jeffrey Goldberg spots a winner in Reuters.
This is from a Reuters story on the Jerusalem bombing earlier today (last Wednesday:
“Police said it was a “terrorist attack” — Israel’s term for a Palestinian strike. It was the first time Jerusalem had been hit by such a bomb since 2004.”
Those Israelis and their crazy terms! I mean, referring to a fatal bombing of civilians as a “terrorist attack”? Who are they kidding? Everyone knows that a fatal bombing of Israeli civilians should be referred to as a “teachable moment.” Or as a “venting of certain frustrations.” Or as “an understandable reaction to Jewish perfidy.” Or perhaps as “a very special episode of ‘Cheers.’” Anything but “a terrorist attack.” I suppose Reuters will mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11 by referring to the attacks as “an exercise in urban renewal.”
The mind reels.
David Harsanyi has more on Reuters’ language use.
… Normally, anti-Israel bias is nothing to get too excited about. With its phony deference to journalistic neutrality, Reuters has a long history of conflating and euphemizing events in its biased reporting of the Middle East, both in obvious and subtle ways.
Most reputable news organizations, for instance, tend to downplay or completely ignore the religious affiliation of man- caused disaster-makers. It’s unseemly to bring stuff like that up. It only divides us.
So why did Reuters — and other news outlets — identify the bombing as taking place not in an Israeli neighborhood, but a “Jewish” one? And why is it a “Palestinian” strike and not a Muslim one? Religious affiliation, it seems, is selectively vital information. Jews, you see, are a religious group occupying Jerusalem, and Palestinians are nationalists striving for autonomy in their homeland.
Of course, Reuters is only the worst offender. It is true that The New York Times can’t file a dispatch from Israel without conflating the religiously motivated murders of civilians with the “settlement” problem. As if Hamas were firing rockets at civilians because it is exasperated by the slow progress of the peace process. …
WSJ article shows the folly of the states depending on confiscatory taxes on the rich.
As Brad Williams walked the halls of the California state capitol in Sacramento on a recent afternoon, he spotted a small crowd of protesters battling state spending cuts. They wore shiny white buttons that said “We Love Jobs!” and argued that looming budget reductions will hurt the Golden State’s working class.
Mr. Williams shook his head. “They’re missing the real problem,” he said.
The working class may be taking a beating from spending cuts used to close a cavernous deficit, Mr. Williams said, but the root of California’s woes is its reliance on taxing the wealthy.
Nearly half of California’s income taxes before the recession came from the top 1% of earners: households that took in more than $490,000 a year. High earners, it turns out, have especially volatile incomes—their earnings fell by more than twice as much as the rest of the population’s during the recession. When they crashed, they took California’s finances down with them.
Mr. Williams, a former economic forecaster for the state, spent more than a decade warning state leaders about California’s over-dependence on the rich. “We created a revenue cliff,” he said. “We built a large part of our government on the state’s most unstable income group.” …