Just Another Day In Paradise

For those of you with any lingering interest in the pestilential viper’s-nest we like to call the “Mideast” — that blasted, slippery-edged sinkhole of human misery that manages always to be going straight to Hell without ever actually getting there and leaving the rest of us in peace — I reprint below two items from John McCreary’s latest NightWatch:

Syria: On 29 November, the administration of Damascus’ airport cancelled all incoming and outgoing flights because rebel groups had cut the road from the airport to Damascus, for the first time.

Syrian rebels also used shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile systems (MANPADs) that were captured from Syrian forces to shoot down a government helicopter and a fixed wing combat aircraft in a 24-hour period.

Comment: The Syrian uprising crossed an important strategic threshold with the first demonstrated capability to shoot down government aircraft. This is a major escalation of the threat to the Damascus government.

One news report stated an opposition group had captured 40 MANPADS in recent overruns of government air force bases. That number is enough to neutralize the government’s air advantage, provided they are distributed adequately to trained shooters. A key question is who is providing the training. That is almost certainly US special forces.

The gradual loss of air superiority means the regime cannot survive, though its demise is not yet imminent.

Several other recent tactical successes by opposition fighting groups also almost certainly are the result of US and possibly other Western training, guidance and possibly leadership. Within four months of American announcements that US Special Operations Forces were providing training to opposition groups in camps in Jordan, the opposition groups suddenly have become tactically more effective. The targets of some of their attacks are more harmful to the Damascus regime and some groups have greater ability to coordinate their attacks.

These are the effects of superior outside military involvement. These same opposition groups fumbled around for 18 months with no significant impact on the stability of the regime. The US is involved in the fight, probably with special forces inside advising selected rebel groups.

The regime is falling back, trying to find a line it can hold. That presumably is the corridor from Damascus to Latakia, the Alawite homeland.

As noted above, policy choices have consequences. Should the Alawite government fall, Syrian Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and other minorities will be killed and shrines destroyed. That is why the Syrian Kurds are opposing the Syrian opposition fighters and jihadists.

State of Palestine: The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday voted to upgrade the status of the Palestinian Authority. Henceforth, the UN will treat the Authority as a non-member observer state, instead of as an entity. The vote was 138 delegates in favor of the measure, nine against and 41 abstentions.

Comment: US State Department and the US Permanent Representative to the UN have been humiliated in one of the worst defeats of US diplomacy in the modern era. The US diplomats failed to persuade US allies to vote with the US. It is a setback for Israel’s negotiating position.

Some news pundits have called it a symbolic victory. Actually that is quite wide of the mark. The Palestinian State will now be an equal – in the UN – negotiating partner with Israel, rather than an inferior.

The positions of the negotiators are forever changed. As a state, Palestine is entitled to a much wider range of international support than as an entity. It is freed from dependence on the largesse of Arab states, the US, the West and non-governmental organizations. It has the authority to negotiate on its own, without Israel permission.

It also may be recognized as a belligerent by other states, entitling it to provision of arms. It also means that Israel’s sea blockade of Gaza may be judged an act of war, rather than an act to contain a renegade entity. Airspace controls also may be affected. As for ground borders, Egypt can negotiate with the Palestinian state about how to control the border in Sinai, rather than with Israel.

Palestine also can negotiate directly with Iran and Sudan to ensure the supply of arms through Egypt. No UN member needs, ex officio, to work with or through Israel, henceforth, in dealing with or helping the Palestinians.

This is a diplomatic and strategic calamity for the US Department of State and its UN mission and for Israel. Its full consequences will become clearer over time, but US national security interests have taken a major hit.

15 Comments

  1. Katherine says

    This vote was an overwhelming recognition, by most of the world’s representatives, that Palestine cannot be forgotten and their people also matter.

    The response today from Israel? Lets build 3000 more houses on the West Bank. Hardly conciliatory and the kind of action which could backfire badly.

    The USA are traditionally supportive of Israel but with the Obama administration back in for another three years, it will not be unconditional. Nor should it be.

    Posted December 1, 2012 at 3:41 am | Permalink
  2. This vote was an overwhelming revelation, by most of the world’s representatives, that Jew-hatred hasn’t been forgotten and that Jewish people continue to serve as the world’s go-to scapegoats.

    The response today from Israel? Lets build 3000 more houses on the West Bank. Hardly submissive to the world’s hatred, and the kind of action which any group of people would adopt, assuming they were desirous of survival.

    The USA have been traditionally supportive of Israel but with the Obama administration back in for another four years, it will not be unconditional. No more Mr. Nice Guy, The Won.

    Jew-haters have a new world leader to look up to now. But Israel, the last refuge for history’s ultimate scapegoats, is prepared to defend the world’s Jewish community against scumbags who masquerade as anti-Zionists.

    Posted December 1, 2012 at 2:45 pm | Permalink
  3. Malcolm says

    Katherine,

    If anything, I’d say that Palestinian lives “matter” far more to Israel, which bends over backwards to prevent civilian casualties, than to the Arab world, to whom they are nothing but pawns. To the Arab nations encircling Israel, and Muslim nations around the world (who have never lifted a finger to resettle the Palestinians, or to ease their troubles in any way at all) the endless misery of Palestine merely makes Israel a permanent target toward which to deflect the seething resentment of their own people, and a convenient (and, clearly, effective) tool for mustering the support of the global West-bashing club headquartered in Turtle Bay.

    I’ll quote John Derbyshire, from a recent Radio Derb podcast:

    One-third of the inhabitants of Gaza are refugees, for example, living in eight huge refugee camps. What are they refugees from? From the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, that’s from what.

    That war was 64 years ago, sixty-four years. The world was awash in refugees 64 years ago, tens of millions of them: in China, as the communists pulled ahead in that country’s civil war; in India and Pakistan, where an estimated 14 million were driven out of one country into the other following partition; in Europe, millions still displaced after World War Two.

    Where are those tens of millions of refugees now? Well, they settled where they could, and got on with life. Only the Palestinian Arabs, refugees from that war which, after all, their Arab brothers started, only they are still festering in refugee camps, the welfare queens of the world, housed, fed, and medicated by the U.N…

    …Israel is an outpost of Western Civilization in a sea of barbarism. We favor Western Civ. We want it defended at all its borders where there are people willing to fight and die in defense of it. The Israelis are certainly willing to do that fighting and dying. Good luck to them, and I hope the U.S.A. goes on giving them the materials and the diplomatic support they need.

    Indeed, given Israel’s care to avoid civilian causalties, one could argue that Palestinian lives “matter” more to Israel than to the Palestinians themselves, given Gaza’s election of a ruling party that is futilely sworn to the extermination of Israel, and that deliberately launches its murderous rocket attacks from densely populated residential areas precisely in order to maximize civilian casualties when Israel is at last provoked into a response.

    Posted December 1, 2012 at 3:19 pm | Permalink
  4. Dom says

    Here’s an interesting graphic, that I think is relevant though maybe slightly off topic.

    http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=470922559617685&set=a.128024363907508.10539.125342830842328&type=1

    Of course it would be even more telling if they included other ethnicities, like Kurds and so on.

    Posted December 1, 2012 at 6:22 pm | Permalink
  5. Anthony says

    The Israel-US relationship probably isn’t sustainable. Israel probably has to go as a Jewish ethno-state at permanent war with Dar Al Islam if America is going to survive. The Jewish state must cease to exist if America is going to reach any kind of solution to the ”Great Game” conundrum. Russia, China, and India are all at odds with the Islamic world – were it not for America’s unconditional fealty to Jews and Jewish ambitions, it would be allying itself with Dar Al Islam and guaranteeing its own access to coveted theaters.

    Islamism is what helped defeat the USSR not just in Afghanistan, but in its proxy regimes as well. The USA realizes that the Islamic World isn’t its main threat, and by taking it on any victory would be a Pyrrhic one. War with the Islamic world means that the USA will lose its strategic leverage against both Russia and China and would therefore cede to them Eurasia.

    The USA is going for broke by seeking to dominate the control of energy resources and their transit. This is the greatest leverage that it can get against both Russia and China. Russia’s economy is reliant on the export of natural resources. This is what the USA and UK have attempted to thwart through the use of the “Colour Revolutions”, the expansion of NATO, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline, all of which would remove the control of the transit routes of these resources out of the hands of the Russians and into the hands of Anglo-America and its proxies, giving them the death grip over the Russian economy.

    The Muslims in Xinjiang are on standby to be activated at any time should China try to assert some power in what America views as its sphere. Much of China’s energy needs are transited through Xinjiang and there is a growing Salafist militancy in that region courtesy of the old Afghan Network (CIA-MI6-Saudi-Pak).

    Posted December 3, 2012 at 12:52 am | Permalink
  6. Malcolm says

    Get thee to Foggy Bottom, Anthony: I hear they’re hiring, and from what you’ve said here, I think you’ll fit right in.

    Just keep in mind that old story about the frog and the scorpion, and brush up your shahada.

    Posted December 3, 2012 at 10:44 am | Permalink
  7. Thanks, Malcolm.

    Posted December 3, 2012 at 11:34 am | Permalink
  8. JK says

    Jeebers.

    Posted December 3, 2012 at 1:44 pm | Permalink
  9. Anthony says

    You won’t find that at State. State is larded with liberal internationalists and Jews. You’ll find it in parts of the Pentagon and CIA, among old-school Catholics and WASPs.

    Posted December 3, 2012 at 4:51 pm | Permalink
  10. Actually, it’s Treasury that’s larded with Jews. They’re really clever with money; and they love bacon.

    Posted December 3, 2012 at 5:30 pm | Permalink
  11. Malcolm says

    Gee, I don’t know… I was going to ask my old pals Muammar and Hosni about this, but for some reason I couldn’t get them on the phone.

    I suppose you could always give Huma Abedin a call. Or maybe Samantha Power.

    Posted December 3, 2012 at 5:49 pm | Permalink
  12. erik says

    Hillary was speaking at the Saban Forum, named after Haim Saban, a billionaire Zionist and Democrat. Saban supported Hillary in ’08 before supporting Obama in the general in ’08 and ’12. Saban has a close relationship to the Clintons. Hillary apparently didn’t say anything substantial there. Just the usual empty political rhetoric to appear at least somewhat neutral, while affirming her support for the double standard – Israel’s maintenance as an ethnostate that no other Western state is allowed to be (“within the bounds of security and a Jewish democratic state”). The Clintons are basically Jewish extended phenotypes – their daughter is married to a Jew and they owe their careers and wealth to Jews. Jews are an international, peripatetic nation. As such there are even Jews who are critical of Israel because they think being so is “good for the Jews” as a diaspora nation.

    Posted December 7, 2012 at 5:14 am | Permalink
  13. A lot of Jews and billionaires are Democrats. They are all clever with money, but not very astute about politics.

    To the best of my knowledge, Hillary has never said anything of substance.

    “No other Western state is allowed to be”? Allowed by whom?

    Stalin’s daughter was married to a Jew also. In fact Stalin’s only grandson was half-Jewish. Stalin was not known to be a Jew lover.

    JFK’s daughter married a Jew too. Come to think of it, everyone who is anyone has a daughter who married a Jew. Even my own father-in-law, who is Catholic, has a daughter who married a Jew. They are smart, handsome, a very good lay, and they are clever with money.

    Virtually everyone owes their career and wealth to Jews, because, as everyone knows, they control all of the world’s banks.

    “Jews are a peripatetic nation” is a euphemism for “they have been ethnically cleansed out of more countries than any other ethnicity”.

    “There are even Jews who are critical of Israel”? The hell you say!

    Posted December 7, 2012 at 12:14 pm | Permalink
  14. erik says

    Nations have border conflicts. Multi-territorial nations have many borders. The Jews’ long experience as a multi-territorial nation has promoted certain behaviors such as hostility to borders and hostility to nationalism among other nations. Jews today play a prominent role in opposing ethnostates for Western groups, and in shaping the elite consensus which is hostile to ethnostates for Western groups, and hostile to nationalism more generally.

    The Clintons do largely owe their success in national politics to Jewish support. Interestingly, Obama does as well:

    http://www.chicagojewishnews.com/story.htm?sid=1&id=252218

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AzoTJa_6Fo

    It’s unlikely Obama would have been propelled to the national stage without this support. Certainly not so quickly and so high.

    Posted December 7, 2012 at 8:15 pm | Permalink
  15. “It’s unlikely Obama would have been propelled to the national stage without this support.”

    Yeah. Despite their well known superiority in the IQ department (at least the Ashkenazim among us), as a demographic, their necks are as stiff as ever. Moses, who (unlike Jesus) invests rather than merely saves, knew this well.

    This is why Moses lead his people through the wasteland of Sinai for 40 years. He was hoping that the surviving younger generations would stop the whining and bitching of their elders.

    Unfortunately, the stiff-necked stupidity of the Chumpskys and the Dershowitzes managed to survive the gene-pool purification process in the Sinai. Which is why, today, we have the fakakte Jewish liberals in such large numbers, especially among the so-called intelligentsia.

    Posted December 7, 2012 at 11:00 pm | Permalink

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