Archive for the ‘Middle East Conflicts’ Category
For the past two months the media has been consumed with talk of Hamas ruled Gaza and the flotillas meant to break the Israeli blockade. But how one might ask did Gaza come to be overrun with Hamas terrorists. The answer is that the world forced Israel to let them in.
By Alan Caruba
"Trusting in the Rock of Israel we now place our signatures in witness to this proclamation, sitting as the Provisional State Council, on the soil of the homeland, in the city of Tel-Aviv, this day, Friday afternoon, the 5th of Iyar, 5708, the 14th of May, 1948.”
This was the moment of the re-birth of Israel announced by Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel. I would call your attention to the year of the Jewish calendar he cited, 5708. It reaches back over the millennia, deep into the Torah, the Old Testament, with its long history of a people chosen to be “a nation of priests and a holy people.”
This fact alone eviscerates all arguments and lies put forth that the Jews do not have a right and a claim to their own homeland. Historians put the birth of Judaism at approximately two thousand years before the advent of Christianity. When the Roman Empire fell, it was restructured as the Holy Roman Empire with Christianity at its core. Jewish resistance to the Roman Empire shaped much of its early history.
At the heart of the Islamic protestations of modern Israel is their contempt for the two faiths that preceded their own that began in 622 A.D. By then Judaism was already a very ancient faith. To be anything other than a Muslim, then and now, was declared to belong to an inferior faith. Islam is distinguished by its inflexible fixation on Allah, a former moon god worshipped in Mecca, and the cult of Mohammed.
By Warner Todd Huston 
On the 25th, the Washington Post served up a lament for Hollywood’s dismal box office returns for the many Iraq war pictures it has churned out over the last several years, wondering why they have all failed so spectacularly? The whole article amounts to the Post just not understanding why moviegoers have stayed away in droves from these dark and dismal movies. But with the anti-Military, anti-American point of view depicted in every single one of these movies, it is no surprise that Americans have ignored these self-denigrating flicks. After all, with soldiers really taking casualties on the battlefield, who wants to see a film that tells us all it’s OUR fault?
Still, the Washington Post is mystified.
After five years of conflict in Iraq, Hollywood seems to have learned a sobering lesson: The only things less popular than the war itself are dramatic films and television shows about the conflict… A spate of Iraq-themed movies and TV shows haven’t just failed at the box office. They’ve usually failed spectacularly, despite big stars, big budgets and serious intentions.
The Post then goes on to wonder if audiences are “turned off by the war, or are they simply voting against the way filmmakers have depicted it?” As the post asks that question, you’d think they are on the verge of understanding. But, this question is dropped right away as the story details one flop after another. Ridiculously, the Post seems puzzled by the fact that audiences have not just mindlessly followed into the theater the “big stars, big budgets and serious intentions” of these failed flicks and no further attempt is made in this story to explore the public’s disinterest.
The Post quotes TV legend Steven Bochco who imagines that his TV series “Over There,” which failed after only 13 episodes, was not well received because Americans felt “a certain sense of powerlessness” about the war. The Post also quotes film historian Jonathan Kuntz of UCLA that the whole thing is just a “bummer.”
By Warner Todd Huston
The newest update to a study published in the British medical journal, the Lancet, claims that 655,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invaded Iraq. This absurd claim has been hailed around the world as evidence of the evil American empire’s murderous reign in the Mid East. But it turns out that the entire study is not only filled with lies, the creators of the study even tried to hide the fact that George Soros funded the thing.
MSM sources like the AP and the Washington Post, among many others, highlighted the report lending it credence when it came out last month but few of those news outlets revealed the source of the study’s funding. While most did reveal that the study was "controversial," few went into just how far off from the truth the details of this study are.
The real facts, however, are beginning to come out.
Michael Fumento has penned a great expose on how many lies fill the famed Lancet Study on Iraqi war deaths and the UK’s Timesonline also revealed the connection with Soros.
The Times tells of the Soros involvement.
Soros, 77, provided almost half the £50,000 cost of the research, which appeared in The Lancet, the medical journal. Its claim was 10 times higher than consensus estimates of the number of war dead.
"The authors should have disclosed the [Soros] donation and for many people that would have been a disqualifying factor in terms of publishing the research," said Michael Spagat, economics professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.
And Michael Fumento has a great run down on all the spurious mathematics promulgated by the study. When comparing the numbers offered by the Iraq Family Health Survey study to that of the study in the Lancet, some startling differences are seen.
So for that last period, while the IFHS daily figure was 2.3 times higher than that of Iraq Body Count, the Lancet 2006 daily figure was a stunning 7.3 times higher than that of the IFHS and 17 times higher than that of Iraq Body Count.
By Erik Rush
"There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967. The agreement must establish a Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people."
–President George W. Bush, January 10, 2008
Geopolitics is such a complicated subject, you see, far beyond the comprehension of the average American. Those whom destiny has ordained to ameliorate the world’s geopolitical woes are far more insightful and inherently capable that you or I could ever hope to be.
I’m being facetious, of course. Without going into the promotion of that belief by politicians over the years due to spineless vacillation or their quest to keep Americans ignorant and uninvolved in the political process, I’d be interested in hearing how the Founding Fathers of this nation would have viewed the above concept, those who took on the most powerful empire on the planet and declaring that they were prepared to fight, kill and die to throw off the yoke of tyranny.
President Bush has gotten a lot of bad press from the establishment media because of who and what they are. I was forwarded some factoids the other day which, though verifiable, I was reluctant to use simply because the initial contact was a group email from a business associate.
There have been 39 combat related killings in Iraq in January. In Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January. That’s just one American city, about as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq.
Though some claim that President Bush "shouldn’t have started this war," consider:
FDR (a Democrat) led us into World War II. Although we were attacked, from 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost, an average of 112,500 per year.
Truman (a Democrat) finished that war and started one in Korea.
North Korea never attacked us.
From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost, an average of 18,334 per year.
John F. Kennedy (a Democrat) started the Vietnam conflict in 1962.
Vietnam never attacked us.
Johnson (a Democrat) turned Vietnam into a quagmire.
From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost, an average of 5,800 per year.
President Clinton (a Democrat) went to war in Bosnia without United Nations or French consent.
Bosnia never attacked us.
By Alan Caruba
The end of a year, any year, is a good time to give some consideration to the reason we have arrived at a particular state of affairs and whether a new direction is required. This is particularly true at a time when the campaigns to be the party’s choice for the presidency is more drenched in debate of religious issues and assertions, than in domestic and foreign policy issues.
The religious views of President George W. Bush may have gotten us to where we are at this point and our national policies could do with far less of it and a far more dispassionate review of our history. Our greatest need is to literally protect and preserve the republic.
I think I first noticed a problem when Bush used the word “crusade” to describe what the U.S. was doing in the Middle East. A born-again Christian, Bush has worn his faith on his sleeve ever since, during the 2000 campaign, he announced that Jesus was his favorite philosopher.
Americans generally are believers. They are predominantly Christian and they have always expected their president to demonstrate some faith in God. We have historically encountered problems when a president believes he was chosen by God for the position and that his actions are sanctioned by God. It’s one thing to pray for guidance. It is quite another to believe one’s action are divinely authorized and approved.
Woodrow Wilson believed God wanted him to be President and, with considerable irony, was re-elected on the slogan, “He kept us out of the war”. When Germany began to attack American ships providing military and other provisions to England, he put American troops into battle in a strictly European war. The result was a disastrous 1919 Treaty of Versailles that became a roadmap to World War II and some present problems.
The U.S. Senate had the good sense to reject membership in Wilson’s dream of a League of Nations, but following the end of World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legacy was the United Nations, an international institution that ignores genocides, embraces intolerance, and is seeking to foist a totally bogus “global warming” crisis on the world.
by Sher Zieve
On Monday, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told reporters that he and other Democrats were not willing to wait for evaluated reports on the troop surge in Iraq. Reid advised that he and his colleagues are moving at virtual breakneck speed to formulate and pass an anti-war bill. While al-Qaeda continues to practice all manner of depravities and perversions—the latest reported corruption being the terrorist organization’s penchant for the profane via literally (not figuratively) baking the children of those it wishes to intimidate and then "serving" said cooked progeny to their parents—most of their debaucheries still go unreported by the terrorist-enabling leftist worldwide press. Most certainly Harry Reid and other Democrat and RINO leaders committed to surrender won’t mention the actual performance and true scope of the Islamists’ goals. Instead, Reid and other appeasers are unwilling to wait for any and all reports from those actually functioning in the Iraq battle theatre. As reports from the front suggest the surge (AKA Operation Arrowhead Ripper) actually is working, the leftist and overwhelmingly Democrat US mainstream media continues their attempts to bury the story.
Note: This same battle surge, being waged by our extraordinary and inordinately courageous US soldiers, must be spun and manipulated by the mainstream media and their Democrat leaders in order for them to achieve their objective of reseizing and then retaining (forever we assume) power. The illusion of power has long been their god.
By Alan Caruba
In mid-December, at the invitation of the Middle East Forum, I attended a luncheon in New York whose featured speaker was Avigdor Lieberman, a Deputy Prime Minster of Israel. He wants the Arabs out of Israel. It cannot be done.
Lieberman is staring at the glacial destruction of Israel by demography; the way populations grow or decrease. For Israel, the numbers do not bode well.
Israel’s Muslim population poses the ultimate threat to its existence. In 1949, there were 110,000 Muslim Arabs, nine percent of the population. By 2005 there were 1,141,000 or sixteen percent. They are, as Daniel Pipes, the Middle East specialist describes them, “a robust, assertive community whose leaders include a Supreme Court justice, an ambassador, members of the parliament, academics, and entrepreneurs.”
by Erik Rush
The law of the jungle is so hard to break, When death walks behind you with each step you take…
- Gary Moore, guitarist and songwriter of Thin Lizzy fame
Some readers may remember that during the 'Seventies and 'Eighties it was a fairly regular occurrence to hear media reports of Israeli intelligence (Mossad) agents kicking in the doors of a fleabag flat, hotel room or safe house in some obscure (or sometimes not-so-obscure) European city and introducing the head of a known terrorist hiding there to around half a dozen or so large-caliber lead projectiles.
Israel's government never offered any denials nor apologies about doing so. They located a threat to their national security, so their operatives clandestinely gained entry to the necessary country, made contact, and terminated the target with extreme prejudice. Of course there was also their awesome attack on Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactors when he attempted to do what we've blithely let Iran get away with.
By Alan Caruba
There’s a reason why political power was taken from the Republicans and given to the Democrat Party. Voters in the political center had concluded that the Iraq invasion has been a failure. They may be wrong, but the Middle East has a long history of befuddling the best efforts to reform it.
At the heart of the election was the conclusion that, given America’s famed managerial and military skills, what had occurred in Iraq was a failure of competency at the highest levels of government. The blame cannot be placed on our soldiers, airmen, and Marines. It was not a failure of the valor of our fighting forces.
It is now widely understood that the White House and Pentagon failed to provide either sufficient manpower or planning for the postwar period.