Monday, March 01, 2010

DOES ANYBODY REALLY KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS ? OR, WHOSE MOVE IS IT ?

Headline: "US TELLS SYRIA TO STOP ARMING HEZBOLLAH IMMEDIATELY".

Yeah, right. Or else we'll say bad things about them or something. Or maybe we'll propose the dreaded....sanctions.

Meanwhile:
After scorning the Obama administration’s appeals to move away from Iran, Syrian President Bashir Assad late last week disregarded another appeal from Washington by holding talks with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah....

The next day, Assad welcomed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for talks, and ridiculed U.S. attempts to split the decades-old Damascus-Tehran alliance, instead taking steps to strengthen it. He then invited Nasrallah to join him and Ahmadinejad, again directly defying U.S. appeals.

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said the three leaders discussed the latest developments in the region and “Israeli threats against Lebanon and Syria.”


I think this is very astute:
Abd al-Malik Rigi is the captured Baluch leader who leads the Jundullah terrorist organization which has been conducting terrorist operations in Iran. Iranian television has now broadcast his forced confession (in English) in which he implicates the CIA. This isn't getting a lot of play in the U.S. media, but it is worth taking note of. The nature of forced confessions — especially Iranian ones — is that they are as likely to be fiction as fact. However, the fact that Rigi is fingering the CIA in great detail likely foreshadows an increase in Iranian action against U.S. personnel and interests.

The dubbed English video of his confession is here.


This is another move in the chess game that Iran is playing with the Obama Administration (and, to be fair, it is just an extension of the same game they have been playing for a few decades and through several administrations). But, in the Obama Administration, they have finally struck paydirt.

For many on the political left, this rather awkward political situation is not the result of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah acting on their own [delusional] ideology or fanatical interests; rather it is largely the outcome of the deliberate and belligerant policies of the evil Bush Administration.

One can only stand in wonder and awe at the incredible amount of self-delusion necessary to believe such nonsense. Who in their right mind could possibly imagine that these dysfunctional leaders in the Middle East are the "victims" of U.S. policy?

Oh wait.

I forgot there is an entire contingent of useful idiots marching and chanting the slogans of the political left, who are not only ready and willing to believe it; they desperately hope it is actually true.

But you have to be in complete denial, with your head safely tucked where the sun don't shine, if you harbor any doubts that the events we are witnessing in the Middle East are not moves in the global war that Islam has launched against the civilized world. We can close our eyes and pretend that it isn't happening at all; Or that everything is America's or Israel's fault; we can insist that Iraq and Afghanistan existed in an alternate universe and are somehow not battles in this war; but no matter how much denial is engaged in, the reality will still be out there.

Wretchard once commented:
...there is a strange tendency, especially among those who would otherwise claim that America is everywhere declining, to ascribe to it an indirect omnipotence. Everything is America's fault. Is the climate changing? Are people in Gaza starving? Is there no help for those being killed in Darfur? Are the Ayatollahs beating up on student demonstrators? Look no further for the cause. It's all America's fault. It's always America's fault.

An unbreakable chain of causality is constructed from Washington politics to the smallest butterfly fluttering in the Amazon. It is the reverse Butterfly Effect; and the logical consequence is that if America does nothing -- if preferably it stops breathing -- then all the evils of the world will return to the lockbox whence they came. John Howard, speaking in Washington, likened this attitude to that of a frightened child. "And it's a war that confronts us all. Those who imagine that somehow or other you can escape it by rolling yourself into a little ball and going over in the corner and hoping that you're not going to be noticed are doomed to be very, very uncomfortably disappointed."


I wonder when we will cease this bizarre tendency to infantalize the enemy in this global war, and recognize that we are dealing with adults whose own set of perverted values--diametrically opposed to ours--have brought them to the place they are in? When will we stop pretending that they do not have free will and are only the poor, helpless victims of American, or Israeli, or Western evil? When will we begin to believe that they actually mean what they have said repeatedly about forcing us to submit to their will or destroying us? When, in short, will we finally admit once and for all that they are fully capable of detailed thought, planning and action--particularly brutal and barbaric action by any civilized standard--to achieve their oft-repeated goals?

Two chess quotes come to mind. The first is from Bobby Fischer: "Chess is life"; and the second is from Max Euwe:
"Do not ever underestimate your opponent, particularly when he is much weaker than you are. You are setting yourself up for a fall if you do this."


We are surely setting ourselves up for a fall in this Game. It's our move; our King is castled and we seem to be aimlessly moving around a few pawns so as not to risk any pieces or inflame our opponent.

Let us consider the positioning of the pieces on the Middle East chessboard and the most recent moves in the Game.

Iran has escalated its rhetoric against the US and Israel and is in full speed ahead mode in its quest for nuclear weapons. And if you think it is for peaceful purposes, then the Obama Administration has a foreign diplomacy spot open for you. I actually believe it is likely it already has such a weapon (bought on the open market) and is waiting for precisely the right opportunity to initiate its "nuclear option."

Obama's attempts to "engage" them and his so-called "smart" diplomacy has actually enabled them to move faster without having to worry about things like "consequences". Other notable side-effects of the Obama diplomacy is that we have angered our closest allies and distanced ourselves from them--at the peril of our own national interest; while simultaneously made many countries who would like to do us harm if they could, smile in anticipation.

Our "Queen" is being regularly mocked by the opposition King and Bishop.

And we might do well to remember that the the word "checkmate" orginates from the Farsi language spoken in Iran and Afghanistan. The original phrase is SHAH-K-MATE which means "The King is Dead".

We are playing against an opponent who is clever, deceitful, and in deadly earnest. It is not we who are controlling that opponent's moves on the board except insofar as he must respond to our moves just as we should be responding to his. All to often we have not countered his aggressive moves simply because there is a large number of people [supposedly] on our side who don't seem to understand that we are playing a very real "game" for very high stakes.

I will end with another chess quote from a grand master, Savielly Tartakower: "No game was ever won by resigning." Unfortunately, under the Beacon of Hope and Change, America has become resigned. Time is nearly up....



[Political Cartoons by Lisa Benson]

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