Thursday, November 28, 2013

Strident neocon, lame Socialist

ON PAPER, he is one of the most powerful leaders in the Western world. Under the French constitution President François Hollande can dispatch troops abroad, as he is about to do in the Central African Republic (CAR), conduct foreign affairs as he pleases, and dissolve parliament as he sees fit. Moreover, his Socialist Party controls all levels of government, from the senate down to a majority of local councils. In diplomacy, Mr Hollande has indeed turned out to be as decisive in his exercise of power as the constitution allows. Yet, on the domestic front, he behaves with ever-shrinking authority.

In January an unexpectedly hawkish Mr Hollande dispatched 4,500 French soldiers and fighter jets to Mali, to push back an incursion in the north by rebels linked to the local branch of al-Qaeda; 2,800 French troops are still on the ground there. More recently, Mr Hollande had his jets on alert, ready to strike targets in Syria, before America’s president halted matters by deciding to consult Congress first. France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, then took a tougher line in the latest negotiations with Iran than the Americans did, insisting on pushing for further concessions and delaying the final deal.

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Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Gloating Chris Hayes Suggests 'Neocons' Wanted 'Muscular Assertion of Military Dominance' Against Iran

On Monday's All In show on MSNBC, as he celebrated the "truly historic" news of President Obama's deal with Iran, Chris Hayes mocked "neocons"  for having a "dark day" and played the part of liberal caricature by suggesting that "neocons' nefariously wanted war with Iran for the "muscular assertion of military dominance."

A bit later, as he admitted that even Democrats in Congress are skeptical of the plan, he fretted about the possibility of Congress imposing more sanctions on Iran as he referred to doing so as "bonkers" and "ridiculous."

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Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Neocon Name-Calling on Iran Deal

Soltan, the neocons are pulling at all available emotional strings in hopes of unraveling President Barack Obama's interim agreement with Iran that restrains but doesn't end its nuclear program.

In one typically over-the-top neocon column in the right-wing National Review, Daniel Pipes compared Obama and the deal on Iran's nuclear program to Great Britain's one-time Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his "peace in our time" agreement with Adolf Hitler.

Neocon John Bolton Calls for Israeli Airstrikes Against Iran

In the wake of an agreement finally being made to address Iran's nuclear program, to no one's surprise, it's got every neocon war monger out there wailing like banshees and one of the loudest was of course our former embarrassment of a U.N. ambassador, John Bolton: Experts Praise Effective Iran Sanctions While Fox's Bolton Calls For Strikes:
Fox News' John Bolton described a historic diplomatic deal between Iran and six world powers as "abject surrender" and attributed failure to a series of economic sanctions against Iran that many experts believe were responsible for bringing the nation to the bargaining table. Bolton followed up by advocating for airstrikes against Israel, a tactic some experts describe as "futile."
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Delicious! Deranged Neocon Nut Says Obama & Kerry Now Are HITLER

The Iran deal is the worst thing that has ever happened to the Israel Firsters. They are in agony.

Here is Seth Lipsky, a major neocon crank and Israel Firster, writing in Ha’aretz. Aparently, Obama and Kerry are helping Iran set up another Holocaust. These people are such sick mf’ers.

God I love their pain:
“Never again” was the statement Menachem Begin made after sending a wave of F-16s against Iraq’s nuclear reactor. “There won’t be another Holocaust in History. Never again.”
No such language could have been used by President Obama in respect of the agreement reached in Geneva. In plain English, the best that could be said of it is that — for the time being — the mullahs can keep their crematoria, so to speak, on standby.
Delicious. Suffer, Seth. And get yourself some xanax or something.

Source

Peace Breaks Out...Neocons Weep

A peaceful agreement has been reached between the P5+1 nations and Iran. As expected, the bomb-dropping idea peddlers are crying like babies:

Daniel Pipes calls peace a disaster: “Barack Obama has made many foreign policy errors in the past five years, but this is the first to rank as a disaster.”

Jennifer Rubin hopes Israel can still find a way to bomb: “Admin needs to reaffirm final deal will comply fully with UN resolutions. If not Israel should act”.


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Neocons let loose

At a certain level, international diplomacy with Iran and a first-in-a-generation breakthrough constitute the worst possible scenario for U.S. neoconservatives. Their vision dictates that change can come to the Middle East, but only through military force – and the more diplomacy and the search for peaceful solutions makes force unlikely, the more it must be rejected. 

And with this in mind, it’s understandable that neocons are even more agitated than usual this morning. With P5+1 – the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany – having reached a preliminary agreement with Iran, the entire neocon vision is facing a historic repudiation. Michael Tomasky noted this morning that among neocons, “there is contemplation of the hideous reality that Obama and the path of negotiation just might work. This is the thing the neocons can’t come to terms with at all. If Obama succeeds here, their entire worldview is discredited. Check that; even more discredited.”

Monday, November 25, 2013

Neocon nightmare: Diplomacy with Iran

When the news broke Saturday night that we had forged a six-month deal with archenemy Iran — we agreed to ease a few sanctions, they agreed to freeze key facets of their nuke program — I knew it was only a matter of milliseconds before the neoconservative warriors started banging their keyboards.
And sure enough, the cascade poured forth: "Tonight, Americans saw how much damage a president with naive, misguided ideas can do to our nation's security," and "This is the face of retreat," and, from Ari Fleischer, "The Iran deal and our allies — you can't spell abandonment without OBAMA," and from William Kristol, the predictable invocation of "Munich" (any time a western leader favors diplomacy over war, Kristol brings up Neville Chamberlain in 1938).

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Objecting to 'militaristic neocon' agenda

I was a bit disheartened to see that the Casper Star-Tribune saw fit to give space on its editorial page to Mr. Clifford D. May, an activist neocon in the pay of Israeli interests.
May, the founder of`Foundation for the Defense of Democracies has a history of making unsubstantiated, inflammatory claims to support his pro-Israeli positions. Not surprisingly, he is also a Faux News contributor.
May’s latest article, "Derail on Iranian Deal," paints big-brother France as coming to rescue poor, clueless Secretary of State John Kerry by preventing him from being hood-winked by those clever Iranians into signing a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear research program in exchange for the lifting of some sanctions.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Neocons Join Bibi’s Anti-Iran Diplomacy “Wig-Out”

On the eve of the latest round of Geneva talks, Americans told pollsters by a striking 2-1 margin they favored a negotiated settlement with Iran over war. This was in the face of a startling anti-diplomacy fear campaign waged by Israel’s Likud leaders in the U.S. and a renewed Israel lobby campaign for more sanctions. One wonders if there is soul-searching in Likud or AIPAC offices about why their messaging is falling flat.

Certainly Israel’s reaction could be fairly called “wigging out.” But Netanyahu seemed   almost measured next to some neoconservative intellectuals. Take this piece, published by Weekly Standard editor Lee Smith in Tablet. Smith essentially accuses Obama of biding his time during  his first term in order to challenge “American Jewish power” in his second. He interprets the Obama administration’s stated desire to pivot away from the Mideast as fancy language to dump Israel. Still he puts up a brave front. Rest assured, right-wing Zionists, Israel doesn’t need America. It can ally with Russia, or China or someone else:

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Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Neoconservatism Rebaptized

George Washington University political science professor Henry Nau has impeccable timing. He has written a book aiming to, in his words, “fill a gaping hole in the foreign policy literature” with a conservative manifesto that “emphasizes the spread of freedom, armed diplomacy, and a world republic without big government.” This is his pithy definition of “conservative internationalism,” the American foreign policy tradition he wants us to rediscover.

A number of developments make his timing propitious: the Republican Party in particular and the conservative movement in general are in crisis. Eight years of the Bush 43 administration left both in tatters.

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Neocons Delighted With Egypt Chaos

Neocons held no love for Egypt’s deposed President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, which some felt threatened the US “influence” over Egyptian affairs that is rented with the annual $1.5 billion foreign assistance check. That a democracy was to be undermined by tanks was no big deal to them – it’s all about influence.

Charles Krauthammer said: “We have no particular stake in Egypt’s economy. Our stake is in its politics. Yes, we would like to see a strong economy. But in a country ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood?”

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Rand Paul tries to reason with Charles Krauthammer on Iran

Thoughts:

1. What is Charles Krauthammer advocating as an alternative to negotiations, aside from increased bellicosity?

2. Hypothetically speaking– how much faith do you have that the Obama regime could execute military operations against Iran any more successfully than it launched healthcare.gov?


3. A nuclear Iran is inevitable. But on the bright side: Israel has a nuclear arsenal capable of wiping the Middle East off the face of the Earth. Let us hope the threat of mutually assured destruction is motivation enough to keep the peace. 

Source

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Neocon attack group compares Obama's health care promises to Iran policy

The Emergency Committee for Israel is warning that President Barack Obama can’t keep promises–whether it’s on health care or Iran.  The neoconservative group’s latest video warns that the American people can’t trust the president, and that he’s the one marching towards a war with Iran.
It’s the latest salvo from right-wingers seeking to scuttle a diplomatic deal with Iran over its nuclear energy program.  Since the breakdown of talks with Iran in Geneva last weekend, American neoconservatives, along with Israeli officials, have come out against a deal with the Islamic Republic.

Friday, November 15, 2013

Neocon redux: How Chris Christie is just like Dick Cheney

From the moment he was declared the winner in his reelection campaign, Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., has been billed as a new kind of Republican. Is it a fair characterization? Yes and no.

Yes, this likely presidential candidate has done a few things other GOP politicians don’t usually do. Yes, he has won reelection in a traditionally Democratic state. And yes, for a few weeks he was actually cordial to President Obama. Even considering the context — he only won against an underfunded opponent and he was only nice to the president when asking for hurricane relief funds — these are, indeed, rare accomplishments for a Republican.

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Thursday, November 14, 2013

Neocons Still Hoping for US-Iran Clash

American neoconservatives are delighted that France, acting as something of a paid lobbyist for the Saudi-Israeli alliance, sabotaged a possible breakthrough between the West and Iran over its nuclear program, thus preserving the military option against Iran that the neocons have long cherished.

Of course, the neocons say they want a peaceful settlement to the dispute – essentially Iran’s total and humiliating capitulation – but no one should be fooled over how the French maneuveris keeping the neocons’ hopes alive for an eventual crisis that will let the bombs fly and regimes change.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Egypt, coup and the United States

The result of the United States’ test in the Middle East since the occupation of Iraq is the series of breaking points it is going through right now. It is high time that the American policies, which have only been perceived in terms of occupations and the scales of power in the legitimacy bubble of 9/11, are put on the table for a closer look. With its occupation of Iraq, America, whether intentionally or not, triggered the fault lines in the region. America’s relationship with the region got even more complicated after the Arab uprisings. Obama, who took office after two terms of neocon administration, at first, gave signals of a different foreign policy path. Nevertheless, despite indications of their determination to make up for the harm done in the Neocon period, the Obama administration failed to follow a tangible and unwavering policy in the region. He preferred the antidemocratic, but risk free world of the old order, to the more democratic but unpredictably, ambiguous world of the new order. 

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Thursday, November 07, 2013

No More Neocon Faux-Cassandra Posturing: American Defense is not “in Decline”

Two pieces got emailed to me in the last few days that nicely illustrate just how entrenched semi-imperial thinking has become in Washington, how wildly disconnected from the reality of US security our foreign policy community’s threat assessments have become, and the hysteria that greets serious debate on DoD’s size in this post-Great Recession era of high unemployment and large deficits. This, by good-journalist-turned-disturbing-militarist Robert Kaplan, and this, by the ‘Iraq was a victory’ crowd at AEI. Here’s Kaplan:

“The bottom may be starting to fall out of the U.S. defense budget. I do not refer to numbers when I say this. I am not interested in numbers. I am only interested in public support for those numbers…. Actually, we might need a big army for an occupation of part of North Korea… The public, in short, wants protection on the cheap. It may not necessarily be willing to police the world with a big navy and a big air force at least to the degree that it has in the past — that is, unless a clear and demonstrable conventional threat can be identified.”

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Tuesday, November 05, 2013

Neocon Max Boot Hates Edward Snowden

Max Boot has it out for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The CFR neocon, a signatory to a screed calling for an invasion that ultimately killed more than a million Iraqis, is pissed about Snowden’s “A Manifesto for the Truth” published by German news magazine Der Spiegel.

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The Neocons’ Iraq War Mess

The neocons are rewriting more Iraq War history, arguing that if only President Obama had stayed the course on an open-ended US military occupation, the regional situation would be a lot better. But the truth is that it was their invasion of Iraq that set loose the chaos.

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