David Rivin Gets It Right

Since I usually mock and deride NRO....I believe that so doing gets souls out of Purgatory....I feel I should note when someone gets it exactly right over there.

Second, the reason Lee Casey and I have been critical of the U.S. Navy is that there are time-tested and cost-effective solutions to piracy problems, and the Navy has not employed them. It’s not a matter of escorting ships; it is a matter of conducting aggressive offensive operations against pirates at sea and on land, driven by robust rules of engagement. For example, we don’t have to wait till a pirate attack occurs; we can stop boats crewed by armed men — there is no legitimate reason for fisherman to brandish automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. This, by the way, is how slave trade was suppressed: Ships that were equipped for carrying slaves were seized, and their crews punished, even if they had no slaves aboard. Captured pirates also need to be punished promptly and harshly. Ransom payments should be intercepted; pirate havens should be bombarded; pirate assets should be seized.

The goal isn’t to nation-build in Somalia; it is make piracy costly, difficult, and risky. All of this is doable.

This is true. Jeez, doesn't anyone read Hornblower novels anymore?

Steven R. Hurst Needs A Factchecker

Oh, wait, he is the factchecker. Uh-Oh.
In the midst of a remarkably silly and wrongheaded "analysis" piece concerning the Somali Pirates, the AP's Hurst drops in this little gem of misinformation:

Short of flooding the waters with fighting ships, the only course of attack would seem to be special operations assaults on the ground in Somalia. But Obama is sure to remember the outcome—Black Hawk Down—when the last young Democratic president, Hillary Clinton's husband, Bill, sent U.S. forces ashore in that lawless land.

The current situation has absolutely nothing in common with the Battle of Mogadishu and "flooding the waters" (Cool metaphor, huh? Weak reasoning gains so much from lazy writing) with "fighting ships" (Ar!) is actually a pretty good idea.... as Hillary pointed out yesterday. In fact, it is such a good idea that every nation that has ever encountered a piracy problem or, for that matter, a U-boat problem has done exactly that.

But beyond all that, President Clinton did not send U.S. forces ashore in Somalia. Our forces went into Somalia in December,1992. Bill Clinton did not assume Presidential authority until January 20th, 1993. A lot of us non-interventionist types believed at the time that it was a pretty thoughtful poison-pill parting gift for president Bush to leave office with.

Checking this "detail" would have taken five minutes, minutes Hurst apparently didn't have. So when the newspapers finally shut their doors just remember that they didn't always produce a lot of value in the first place.

Goure on Israel

Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute has quite an amusing post which speaks body bags about the blinkered world-view and unfounded assumptions which define the thinking of the Israeli Lobby and their fellow travelers. Actually, Goure appears to doubt the existence of an Israeli Lobby in something of the same way that J. Edgar Hoover once claimed to doubt the existence of the Mafia.

At any rate, here is Goude describing his beatific vision of a glorious future in which Israel and the U.S. walk hand in hand through a common adventure in reshaping the Middle East:

The reality is that no so-called Israel lobby is necessary to impact U.S. Middle East policy because our interests and those of Israel are largely congruent. Whether it is the natural affinity of democracies; our shared political and social modernity; the common opposition to Soviet expansionism during the Cold War; the sharing of intelligence; technology cooperation; equal distance, politically speaking, from the internecine political warfare that consumes the Arab world; a mutual determination to defeat terrorism; or a shared culture…Israel and America are in accord. What is the basis for our strategic relationship with the Arab nations? The answer is one word, oil. Absent oil, Israel alone would continue to hold our interest in the region. If the Obama Administration is successful in weaning the U.S. from its addiction to oil, Israel alone will be of strategic interest to this country. At least that will be the case until democracy and representative governance takes hold elsewhere in the region.

Of course, many of us would vastly prefer that "absent oil" the United States have no strategic interests of any kind in the Middle East....perhaps we could station a cultural attache there, but beyond that, nothing at all. Absent oil, we would have little need for a forward military base and none at all for any entangling alliances. Let the Saudi Royal Family and the Knesset paddle their own canoes. Unfortunately the oil reserves will not run dry all at once and, as they get scarcer and more expensive, it is more likely than not that all the great powers will deal themselves a hand in a bloody contest that will make The Great Game look like a round of pinochle. Imagine a world without struggles for control of the Crimea, without Suez Crises, without future 9/11s. It seems to me to be a pretty picture for Americans. For Israel it may look a bit different.

I feel very little concern little concern for what I feel is Israel's increasingly tenuous relationship with representative democracy. Further, in light of Israel's irksome tendency to spy on the United States, to mention the "sharing of intelligence" seems a trifle ironic. I do not perceive that America is at war with the tactic of terrorism, no matter how deplorable it is - this kind of sentimental claptrap is a residue of the bankrupt Wilsonism of the Bush administration. As to representative government taking hold in the region, let's wait for it to take a good,firm hold in Israel first, shall we?

Israeli Politics - Soviet Style

From Anti-War News:

Israel Bans Arab Parties From Election
Balad Chairman Asks Why Lieberman is so Afraid of Democracy

By a margin of 26-3, the Israeli Central Elections Committee decided to ban the Balad Party from running in next month’s election. By a margin of 21-8, they also banned the United Arab List-Ta’al (UAL-T). The two bans will prevent more than half of the current Arab members of Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, from running for reelection.

The Arab parties earned the ire of the most hawkish elements in the Israeli government by publicly opposing the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. Balad likewise made enemies by explicitly calling for equal rights for all citizens of Israel, regardless of national or ethnic identity, which the ruling Kadima Party said would “undermine Israel’s identity as a Jewish state.”

A handful of Arabs will remain on the ballots across Israel, running for as-yet-unbanned Jewish majority parties, but with the general consensus among most of the population that Israeli Arabs are traitors based purely on their ethnic background, they would seem to have an uphill battle. Many disillusioned Arab voters may not vote at all, now that the only significant Arab parties aren’t allowed on the ballot.

During the discussion, Balad Chairman Jamal Zahaika called the move to ban his party “a test for Israeli democracy” and warned that the ban would lead to an outright Arab boycott of the election.

Zahaika also asked Avigdor Lieberman, the driving force behind the ban, “Why are you afraid of democracy?” Lieberman declared Balad a terrorist organization and said “whoever values life” would understand the need to ban it.

Headline Of The Year

Zimbabwe asks Bush to leave office quietly.
(h/t: NRO's Corner)

Sanity On Afghanistan

Big h/t to Andrew Sullivan for this. Everyone should read the whole thing, but the part that is the attention-grabber is an alleged quote from the British Ambassador to Afghanistan:

"Within five or ten years from now... (it would be positive) if Afghanistan were governed by an acceptable dictator... This outlook is the only realistic one and we should prepare our public opinion to accept it... In the short term we should dissuade the American presidential candidates from getting more bogged down in Afghanistan.... The American strategy is destined to fail."

My fascination with Afghan affairs constitutes something of a long term avocation on my part, and I couldn't agree more. Regrettably Obama is, if anything, even more enthusiastic about upping the ante in Afghanistan than McCain. We need to start planning towards withdrawing our forces now.

Our Allies In The War On Terror

"Burying women alive for honour is tribal tradition"

ISLAMABAD: The killing of women for honour is a demand of the tribal traditions, Balochistan Senator Israrullah Zehri informed the Senate on Friday.

Zehri was responding to Senator Yasmeen Shah’s statement in which she had drawn the House’s attention towards reports that five women had been buried alive in Balochistan in the name of honour. She called it a sheer violation of human rights.

Zehri asked the members not to politicise the issue, as it was a matter of safeguarding the tribal traditions.

Naturally this puts me in mind of the great apocryphal quote from the days of the British Raj.

You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.

Puny Russian Girly-Man

As usual, Matt Yglesias takes counter-intuitive to a whole new level.

Our Man In Tblisi

A woman, actually. An American on the ground in Tblisi. This is pretty gripping stuff.

The Same Dog

I had not intended to start this effort out by discussing anything as portentous as International Affairs, but the situation in Georgia is so tragic, so alarming, and was so avoidable that it demands a moment of my attention. By far the best, fairest and least sentimental commentary that I have seen has been that emanating from Daniel Larison.

I do not believe that any intervention on the part of the United States or NATO would be wise or even possible in any meaningful way. Bluntly, it seems to me to be a foreordained conclusion....in the Manifest Destiny sense....that Russia will continue to dominate Georgia and the Ukraine politically, just as they dominate them economically and militarily. For the West to dictate to them with respect to these Nations seems as foolish and as unproductive as bidding the seas to recede (with apologies to Senator Obama).

Should our State Department decline to follow my wise counsel, which is usually likely, they have an opportunity to try to draw a bright red line around Ukraine, Georgia already being a fait accompli. This would be dangerous enough, as I suspect Russia's designs on the Ukraine are non-negotiable. However, we might be able to delay Russia for a moment. American law has an unofficial canon of application called the "First Bite Rule"whereby a dog of no known vicious propensities need not be destroyed upon it's first attack. Well, Russia is not quite "a dog of no known vicious propensities" but we might follow this logic a bit and give them Georgia "on the house" as it were, while warning them that similar conduct respecting Ukraine would be regarded more seriously.

In this context, I note that Russia is already accusing the Ukrainians of providing materiel support to the Georgian armed forces....obviously, I have no idea whether this is true or not, but the allegation certainly provides a convenient plotline for Russia....the notion that they are only employing their Military power in response to armed aggression on the part of their former Republics. Our time to influence even a Ukrainian scenario may be very short.