My, so many interesting things afoot in the Gulf and environs lately! Much to think about: – The ongoing game between AQAP and the Saudis… – …in particular, between Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri and Mohammed bin Nayef (little brother Abdullah Asiri having already sacrificed his life in vain on that score); – That Fahd al-Quso was [...]
Well, it appears that Marine le Pen will be the kingmaker in France this time around, having attracted fully a fifth of French voters to her National Front party in today’s election. This was nearly double the turnout for her opposite number on the Socialist far left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Assuming that National Front supporters will [...]
Armed with weapons purloined from Muammar Qaddafi’s arsenal, Tuareg fighters and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb give us what I think is referred to around Washington these days as a “teachable moment”. Today’s lesson? The law of unintended consequences.
March 31, 2012 – 10:36 pm
Oh, my. For a truly startling, completely unforeseeable turn of events, check out this item from the Times: Islamist Group Breaks Pledge to Stay Out of Race in Egypt CAIRO — The Muslim Brotherhood nominated its chief strategist and financier Khairat el-Shater on Saturday as its candidate to become Egypt’s first president since Hosni Mubarak, [...]
February 29, 2012 – 10:04 pm
It took a year, but it seems reality is finally beginning to impinge upon Thomas Friedman, who, of all people, should have known better all along. Beginning to impinge, I say, because there is one reality — the elephant, as they say, in the room — that he, and most of the academic and political [...]
February 29, 2012 – 1:49 pm
AP is reporting that “Israeli officials say they will not warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. The pronouncement, delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations with U.S. officials, sets a tense tone ahead of meetings in the coming days at the White House and in [...]
February 24, 2012 – 4:19 pm
Now that President Obama has made his apology to Hamid Karzai for those Korans that got burned the other day, a concerned American woman expresses her own regrets in this video clip. Update: And here’s Newt Gingrich, explaining things to Piers Morgan.
February 9, 2012 – 11:57 am
The fragrant efflorescence of the Arab Spring is, as the old song goes, “busting out all over”. A particularly lovely blossom is the one we so carefully nurtured in Libya, where, as the Times reports today, the nation is descending into sanguinary chaos. Our love’s labour there is done, it seems; we are busy gardeners, [...]
February 7, 2012 – 7:30 pm
For those of you with an interest in strategic security and geopolitics, here are two items just in that I think are worth your time: first, a surprising comment from NightWatch on the situation in Syria; second, an analysis by George Friedman of the stalemate in Afghanistan. See also this overview of the “Arab spring” [...]
January 30, 2012 – 9:15 pm
How wonderful it is to see democracy flowering at last in the Maghreb! It would be too much, though, to expect everything to be put right all at once, after so many years of ruthless oppression. Even though Egypt’s newly elected political leaders have now consolidated their parliamentary power in the wake of last year’s [...]
January 12, 2012 – 11:13 pm
With a hat tip to Dennis Mangan, here’s a provocative item: Israel Upholds Citizenship Bar for Palestinian Spouses Israel’s Supreme Court has upheld a law banning Palestinians who marry Israelis from gaining Israeli citizenship. Civil rights groups had petitioned the court to overturn the law, saying it was unconstitutional. “Human rights do not prescribe national [...]
January 9, 2012 – 2:19 pm
With a hat tip to VFR, here’s the Jerusalem Post’s latest report on the Islamist renaissance that is coalescing in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’. Meanwhile, DEBKA reports that in Egypt, General Tantawi and the SCAF grow weary of their burden, and are negotiating an early handover of the reins of power to the [...]
January 2, 2012 – 5:21 pm
Nearly a year ago, as the uprising in Egypt was gaining traction, I wrote: The Muslim Brotherhood (or “Ikhwan”) differs from militant Islamist factions like al-Qaeda not in its goals, which are more or less the same, but only in its strategy: it has no moral or philosophical aversion to violent jihad, but considers it [...]
December 23, 2011 – 7:02 pm
Diana West comments here on the dismal verdict in the Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff trial in Vienna. Her crime, if you haven’t followed the case, was to comment disapprovingly on Mohammed’s deflowering of his nine-year-old wife Aisha. Well, tolerance is paramount in a decent society, I guess. Meanwhile, Christmas masses have been canceled in Iraq due to [...]
December 22, 2011 – 2:28 pm
For you strategic-security wonks, John McCreary has published a substantial post on events in North Korea today at NightWatch — complete with a parting jab at the Times. I’ll reproduce it here. North Korea: North Korea is demanding that foreigners either remain in their homes or leave the country. Pyongyang authorities ordered some foreigners to [...]
December 18, 2011 – 10:30 pm
Kim Jong Il has died. This is going to be interesting.
December 18, 2011 – 12:40 pm
Horrifying images and video from Egypt, here. One of the consistent lessons of history, from Aristagoras to Gorbachev, is that authoritarian systems place themselves at great risk when they attempt to liberalize. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is learning this lesson today; they have unleashed forces that they have no idea how to [...]
December 15, 2011 – 7:05 pm
Here are a couple of recent items on the dawa-jihad front: First: you may have heard about the kerfuffle that arose recently when the home-improvement chain Lowe’s decided to yank its sponsorship of the “anti-Islamophobic” television series All-American-Muslim. (Dozens of other sponsors soon joined them; all are now predictably being tarred as “racists” by the [...]
December 14, 2011 – 8:42 pm
The British New York Times columnist Roger Cohen has registered, in this recent item, his condescending disapproval of David Cameron’s rejection of the EU’s fiscal-union proposal. It is regrettable, opines Mr. Cohen, that the “pinstriped effluence” of the ancient British nation should wax so mawkishly sentimental over its silly old sovereignty, which is at this [...]
December 9, 2011 – 11:44 pm
David Cameron is getting plenty of heat from the EU for standing up for his people, for once. Well, good for him, I say, for refusing to surrender England’s ancient sovereignty to a lot of unelected Eurocrats as their doomed continent falls under the all-too familiar shadow of coalescing German dominance. To quote Winston Churchill: [...]
December 8, 2011 – 10:23 pm
In a recent STRATFOR article, George Friedman uses the example of the “Arab Spring” uprising in Egypt as a case study in what he calls “an inherent contradiction in Western ideology and, ultimately, of an attempt to create a coherent foreign policy.” At the root of this ideological confusion, says Friedman, is a tension between [...]
December 1, 2011 – 11:27 am
In the latest NightWatch, John McCreary makes some important points about recent developments in Iran, and about the West’s policy of economic sanctions: Iran: Comment: Several reputable analysts have suggested that the attacks against the British Embassy are symptoms of a fundamental political struggle in the Iranian leadership elite. The argument is not new, but [...]
December 1, 2011 – 12:04 am
Here’s a stunning development, a real shocker: Early Results in Egypt Show a Mandate for Islamists Seems to me there was somebody who saw this coming almost a year ago, even before the Times started writing things like “We can think of no better rebuttal to Osama bin Laden and other extremists.” Back around January [...]
November 23, 2011 – 4:49 pm
Matt Yglesias comments at Slate on the three realistic prospects for the Eurozone: disintegration, German domination, or… actual democracy. As Mr. Yglesias points out, creating a unified, pan-European democratic republic would be a very “tall order”. As for German domination, my memory’s not as good as it once was, but it does seem to me [...]
November 20, 2011 – 6:36 pm
This from VOA: Grenades Hit Syria’s Baath Party Building in Damascus Syrian activists say several rocket-propelled grenades hit a ruling Baath Party building in Damascus Sunday, as President Bashar al-Assad vowed he will not “bow down” to international pressure to ease his brutal crackdown on dissent. The Local Coordination Committees activist network and several residents [...]
November 17, 2011 – 10:42 pm
In the discussion we linked to yesterday (well worth your time, by the way, if you are interested in matters military and strategic), George Friedman argued that although China has made a Great Leap Forward beyond anything Mao could have imagined, it is now reaching a point of economic fatigue, if not exhaustion. In particular, [...]
November 16, 2011 – 10:24 pm
For you strategic-security wonks, here’s a meaty item: an in-depth discussion between foreign-policy expert Robert Kaplan and STRATFOR’s George Friedman on the changing balance of sea power between the U.S. and China.
October 29, 2011 – 9:29 pm
Strong stuff yesterday from Andy McCarthy on our doings in Libya. Excerpt: [A] throng of seething Islamists stripped, beat, paraded, and finally shot Qaddafi execution-style, all the while screaming the signature “Allahu Akbar!” battle cry with a fervor that would have made Mohamed Atta blush. They then shoved the despot’s corpse into a refrigerator — [...]
October 26, 2011 – 2:08 pm
If our previous item wasn’t gloomy enough for you, here’s a dark assessment of the gathering storm beyond our borders, from the Center For Security Policy. A longish excerpt: Muammar Gadhafi’s death last week prompted the Obama administration to trumpet the President’s competence as Commander-in-Chief and the superiority of his “small footprint,” “lead-from-behind” approach to [...]
October 26, 2011 – 8:53 am
Among the snazzier features of the new iPhone is a voice-activated assistant called Siri. My daughter has one of the new phones and gave me a demo the other day, and I was duly impressed (although this is obviously a technology that is still in its infancy). Apparently, though, Siri is having trouble adjusting to [...]
October 22, 2011 – 2:20 pm
It appears that the late Muammar Qaddafi was the richest person in the world, worth over $200 billion. Here.
October 20, 2011 – 1:02 pm
Muammar Qaddafi is dead. As we await the flowering of secular Jeffersonian democracy in Libya, let us pause to offer our condolences to senators Lieberman, Graham, and McCain.
October 18, 2011 – 4:57 pm
The captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit was released today, after five years of imprisonment by Hamas. His ransom? It included the release of 1,027 prisoners, many of them terrorists. Will some of the released prisoners commit further acts of terror, meaning that Shalit was ransomed with the blood of Jews yet to be murdered? Almost [...]
September 25, 2011 – 9:37 pm
With a hat tip to Dennis Mangan: the organization Genocide Watch has declared South Africa to be in stage 6, “preparation”, of the progression toward genocide (the last stage — genocide itself — is stage 7). Of course you probably already knew this, because the mainstream media always pay extra-special attention to hate crimes against [...]
September 25, 2011 – 5:40 pm
In the wake of new evidence of ISI support for Haqqani attacks in Kabul earlier this month, our official relationship with Pakistan has become very tense indeed. Here’s John Mcreary’s summary, from the September 22nd NightWatch: Pakistan-US: US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mullen said on 22 September that Pakistan is exporting violent extremism [...]
September 24, 2011 – 9:57 pm
Diana West argues that our COunter-INsurgence strategy in Afghanistan — in which we order our soldiers to dismount from their armored vehicles and mingle with the locals, in the chimerical hope of “winning hearts and minds” — has exacted a terrible toll in blast injuries to the feet, legs, and genitals of our troops. Here.
September 24, 2011 – 11:59 am
Back in May, it looked as if Dmitry “Darth” Medvedev might be so daring as to try to keep the Russian presidency for himself, rather than handing it back over to his Sith overlord at the end of his term. No longer.
September 22, 2011 – 2:43 pm
These are, to put it mildly, worrisome times. The global economy is collapsing before our eyes, the core of Western civilization has rotted to the point that it can no longer stand erect, and the Middle East, that ancient cauldron of strife and woe, is about to boil over once again. The vile, snake-eyed Mahmoud [...]
September 20, 2011 – 10:18 pm
For tonight, here’s a pair of caustic items: Barry Rubin on the Palestinian gambit at the U.N., and a scathing editorial from the National Review on the President’s tax proposal. Comments are open, and readers may rant if they feel the need to, but I’m headed into a busy couple of days and am unlikely [...]
September 20, 2011 – 8:47 pm
U.S. building secret drone bases in Africa, Arabian Peninsula, officials say
September 15, 2011 – 10:01 am
Front page of today’s New York Times: Islamists’ Growing Sway Raises Questions for Libya TRIPOLI, Libya — In the emerging post-Qaddafi Libya, the most influential politician may well be Ali Sallabi, who has no formal title but commands broad respect as an Islamic scholar and populist orator who was instrumental in leading the mass uprising. [...]
September 14, 2011 – 10:26 am
This from John McCreary of NightWatch, on yesterday’s Taliban attack in Kabul (my emphasis): Afghanistan: Special comment: The details of the five-hour complex attack in Kabul have been reported all day. An extremely knowledgeable, well-informed and brilliant Reader provided feedback that most of the news coverage is factually wrong, but NightWatch will provide more details [...]
September 3, 2011 – 10:22 pm
A reader has sent along a link to a rousing speech given by Geert Wilders in Berlin today. An excerpt: My friends, we need to give political power back to the nation-state, in the name of democracy, in the name of freedom, in the name of human dignity. By defending the nation-states we defend our [...]
It’s been a fortnight now since Anders Behring Breivik’s havoc in Oslo. Cultural-conservative bloggers, aghast, have mostly tried to do three things in their subsequent commentrary: First and foremost, to condemn Breivik’s mass slaughter as irredeemably evil; Second, to dissociate themselves from any responsibility for it; Third, to attempt, within the context of the strongest [...]
John McCreary at NightWatch, always an indispensable resource for those who like to keep an ear to the ground, has offered some particularly pointed commentary on the Mideast over the past few days. First, Afghanistan. Our open-ended nation-building project having foundered on some sharp and immovable realities, we are leaving. But rather than make clear [...]
Looks like a little turf war brewing in Gaza. Story here.
One of the ways China has been eating our lunch lately is by sitting on the sidelines as we spend and bleed in God-forsaken Mideast ratholes, then snapping up the opportunities left behind as we stagger homeward with our pockets turned out. The latest example is here.
On January 28th, as the ground was shifting in Egypt, our crack strategic-analysis team here at waka waka waka saw a critical opportunity for the Muslim Brotherhood, and predicted that the Ikhwan would step smartly into the breach. We wrote: Nature abhors a vacuum, and although the newspapers have so far reported that religious groups [...]
There’s a good deal of disagreement out there about whether we should be getting out of Afghanistan. The prospects are bad either way. A while back, after I’d finally emerged from the herd-minded and thoughtless liberalism of my youth, I became sympathetic to neoconservative optimism about remaking the world in America’s image. I imagined right [...]
Good news. One cheer for Europe. Here.