I will be in Britain in three days and have been concerned about what I will find. We have already changed our plans a couple of times. Originally, we were going to Greece, a trip I had planned for years to see certain things I always wanted to see.
As the summer crisis built, I decided that Greece might not be a good place to be. That, of course, was the Greek crisis of its economy and the risk of public unrest. Now, we have a much more serious crisis brought on by Middle East turmoil and massive refugee flows. Experienced people are deeply distressed by what is happening.
All across the Old Continent we are seeing massive flouting of law and order as thousands, tens-of-thousands, maybe more, of so-called refugees flood into Europe and then slosh about from one country to another looking for the best deal. The UK has become a particular target as “refugees” try to make their way to Britain’s generous public benefits. Recall that in a fit of Euro madness the leadership of the UK, traditionally the sole repository of common sense and hard-eyed realism in Europe, agreed enthusiastically with the construction of the absurd Chunnel, putting thereby an end to one of the country’s historic defenses, the sea. What would Drake and Nelson have to say about that?
That Chunnel has become, as one very non-PC English friend told me some years ago in a bar in Sri Lanka, “France’s garbage disposal.” The issue, however, goes beyond the Chunnel. The “refugees” or “migrants” arrive by the thousands every day at Heathrow and quickly claim their benefits–all in line with deranged leftist Labour’s deliberate plan to change the nation’s demographic composition. As almost anybody who has visited London recently can tell you, that most wonderful of cities is now not so wonderful, and has lost its Englishness.
I’ll be there Thursday and will post some observations. We have already decided to avoid the “Chunnel” and the Eurostar train to Brussels.
Videos taken in Europe, especially Hungary, show that the refugees are mostly young men of military age, and that they are refusing food and water offered by well meaning residents and governments. The American newspapers, of course show photos of women and children, not the angry young men.
This is an invasion and I am very worried about it. The Sunday talk shows did the same thing the newspapers do, talk about how we “have an obligation” to these people. Maybe Obama has but I don’t. Iraq was stable when he was elected. I don’t think there was ever a chance to make Afghanistan stable in a modern sense and I was opposed to that occupation back to 2009.
Iraq was always a better bet than Afghanistan because it is a rich country and had a modest middle class already. In fact, I think Iraq has a good chance to become the most successful Arab state. On the other hand, I think Afghanistan is a very risky situation.
During Afghanistan’s golden age which consisted of the last king’s rule, the country consisted of a small civilized center in Kabul while the rest of the country existed much as it did in the time of Alexander the Great.
Frankly I think we should have given up on Pakistan.
I will post some comments and photos from Europe later this week. I’m sure we will enjoy our trip and my friends assure me that things are not nearly as bad as the newspapers say. We’ll see.
“Iraq was stable when Obama was elected.” What utter nonsense. You neo-cons are nuts.
Iraq was stable when Obama was elected? You’re nuts.
US interventions and wars have caused two-thirds of the problem; the US should take in two-thirds of the refugees and get its troops out of Europe and the Mideast.
Germany and Russia could form a stabilizing bloc whereas the US only causes havoc wherever it goes, what with its
overweening police state bent on maximizing profit while protecting Israel and oiligarchies.
Most of these refugees are from Syria or Libya. They were made refugees by US foreign policy. First the US killed Gadaffi in Lybia. Lybia became lawless and the US ambassador collected the weapons formerly used by Gadaffi and gave them to Alqaida and other groups in Syria to overthrow President Al Assad. Most of the weapons the US supplied were captured by Isis or given to Isis. Isis used these American supplied weapons to terrorize the Christians who had lived in Syria since the day Jesus was murdered.
Now the Russians have moved troops into Syria. Hopefully the Russians can destroy Isis and bring peace to the Christians who live in Syria and Iraq so that the refugees can return home. The US will use NATO to attack Russia in order to save ISIS. If the US fails to stop Russia from brinnging peace to Syria, then the US will be kicked out of NATO and replaced by Russia.
China has pledged to help Russia bring peace to Syria and thereby bring the Christian refugees home to Syria and Lybia.
Spoiler alert: the refugees left because of Bashar al-Assad and if Bashar and his disgusting wife are free to turn Syria country into another Turkmenistan, there will be even more refugees.
Not everything revolves around the Christians.
““Iraq was stable when Obama was elected.” What utter nonsense. You neo-cons are nuts.”
“Iraq was stable when Obama was elected? You’re nuts.”
I guess you think Obama and Biden are neocons ?
Biden: Biden saying Iraq is “one of Obama’s ‘great achievements’
Obama is a neocon ?
We’ve removed 100,000 troops from Iraq”¦ We’ve ended combat missions”¦ We are on track to remove the rest of the troops”¦ Bring them home by the end of this year. in Iraq, we’ve succeeded in our strategy to end the war”¦ We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq
The left and its memory. Too bad there is this thing called the “Internet.”
There is a long history behind Iraq and what happened. Leftists who know no history are not very good at understanding. Most of that history begins with World War I and the Ottoman Empire but it also begins with the failures of Islam as a political system.
You could read The Closed Circle: And Understanding of the Arabs, But you won’t.
>>You neo-cons are nuts.
Doesn’t know what a neo-con is, weighs in anyway…
I wonder where this article is getting linked? I’m sure the write up is eye opening.
In January of 2009, when Obama took office, Iraq was in the middle of a phased transfer of military responsibilities, province by province as the local military gained enough capability. This is not stability per se, as this phased transfer was necessarily dynamic. It was controlled evolution to a superior state of affairs that hadn’t been seen since the Baathists came to power in their coup. But that’s a mouthful to say and stability is, in my opinion, a forgivable shorthand that only pedants would protest.
Today, the state of affairs in Iraq is bad and we’re back in crisis mode with much less US control over the situation and its evolution. Nobody thinks that 2015 is better than 2009. So where did things go wrong?
Of course US had imposed a stability on Iraq. It cost tons of money and many lives but the Bush administration (forget for the moment, if you can, whether it was right or not to do so) fought a war there and won. Obama inherited the improved situation. To maintain and improve the stability would have cost far less than winning that stability. Obama threw it away. Nothing, to my way of thinking, shows the hidebound perverseness and stupidity of this administration.
…of this administration better than this failure.
” its overweening police state bent on maximizing profit while protecting Israel and oiligarchies.”
The looney left is certainly weighing in.
It’s sad to see such fools posting comments but I think we’ve seen this one before.
HuffPo, which I look at most days, is awash in these ignorant and triumphalist nonsense comments. The authors of the “articles” are not much better.
That is the reason I fear we may have a revolution. The two sides are very far apart and there is a lot of anger. I had a commenter at Althouse stalking me the other day. Going to my personal blog and seeking stuff to accuse me with. I make no secret of who I am and where I post personal stuff. The only people who have ever done this before were leftists from Washington Monthly years ago when I discussed single payer and disagreed with them.
The poor, defeated neocons get blamed for Libya, even though that was an Obama/Hillary/EU production. To be fair, though, some of them (like Rubio) supported it from the sidelines.
The US didn’t kill Qaddafi, his own people did. They revolted against him because they had had enough of his brutally oppressive (and incompetent) tyranny. But Qaddafi was anti-American, so Obama and his crew couldn’t bring themselves to move against him. They sat on their hands while Qaddafi used his cash reserves to raise a mercenary army to crush the Libyan people. When that butchery became too horrifying to ignore, they finally acted to break Qaddafi’s gang, but in the slowest clumsiest manner imaginable. Civil order in Libya was completely wrecked by the prolonged conflict, resulting in the present chaos, which was not foreordained.
This same process has been replicated in Syria.
But I don’t see any malicious intent on the part of Obama. “Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.”
Rich Rostrom – Sensible people who are ignorant and incompetent regarding policy and politics have enough self-awareness not to vote, much less run for office. Then there’s Obama who went for the brass ring and got it.
@ Rich Rostrum.
I just wonder if societies based upon the Islamic faith are capable of democratic governance? I mean, is an community, whose foundations are Islamic, only able to maintain stability in the presence of leader who is prepared to be brutal? I’ve had several Syrian patients tell me that under Assad’s regime, as long as you stayed out of politics the regime left you alone. Indeed, there is an interesting Top Gear episode where the hosts were traveling around Damascus prior to the civil war and it certainly didn’t look like North Korea or the former USSR.
The U.S. may not have killed Qaddafi but it sure as hell encouraged the disaffected.
U.S. policy int the Middle East has been a disaster because it rests on the assumption that “within every Gook there’s an American waiting to come out.” It just doesn’t work that way.
I never thought I see the day when I’d say that Putin has a better grasp on Middle East affairs than the West. But then again, I never thought anyone was going to take gay marriage seriously either.
Slumlord – Are you sure you want to use a racist epithet towards South Koreans as your PC busting insult example? It doesn’t really work because the Koreans themselves are one of the best counterexamples to your idea. American policy has been a disaster because there was no meaningful support for the Ludwig Erhard types that are local. Iraq maintained a ration system instead of unleashing their farmers in a free market for example.
The US has succeeded in knocking the Middle East out of its dead end road to nowhere. Nobody can claim that it was a failure at that. But what came next has been much less of a success for the policy. It’s not too late to retrieve that and turn it to a long term victory (measured on a century scale). Because of Obama’s frittering away of the US’ position, it will cost a lot more in local blood and treasure.
The “gook” slur is out of date. Almost as out of date as “Worthy Oriental Gentleman” which was shortened to “WOG” by British colonials who had been chastised (as the story goes) for calling locals by less polite epithets.
Asians have been quite successful at free enterprise and the Chinese diaspora was hated in much of the far east and called “The Jews of the Orient” for their business acumen. China has failed at government for 600 years, going back to the Mongol Empire which feared their own people and shut down exploration, ship building, metal working and much else. When the Europeans arrived in China in the 16th century, they found the country that had invented gunpowder and cast iron bells thousands of years before, unable to use iron tools.
The Muslims, however, have a failed political system invented by a caravan raider which has not progressed since 700 AD.
“Spoiler alert: the refugees left because of Bashar al-Assad and if Bashar and his disgusting wife are free to turn Syria country into another Turkmenistan, there will be even more refugees.
Not everything revolves around the Christians.”
Not everthing and not anything. Obama, Merkel, the UN have never acknowledged them nor the genocide against them.
Here’s a news flash for you: Syria has been a totalitarian state for its entire existence. It was the only thing keeping the country together. Now, rather than being the result of the crisis, the recent displacement of Arabs is the cause of crisis.
Not sure “gook” is out of date. On an email list I frequent was a male, slightly older than me, Vietnam Vet; who would not cease referring to Asians as “gooks”, “Chinks”, etc. Even after the entire list jumped his feces about it specifically referencing me, he continued. He is not there anymore.
Just for the Chinese historical record, after the Mongol Dynasty [the Yuan came the Chinese Ming dynasty. Chinese science, trade, and maritime navigation [see Admiral Zheng He] flourished. I have often contended that if China had discovered the limited liability corporation at the same time as the West, y’all would be eating with chopsticks.
The Ming dynasty started collapsing in the early 1600’s, and ended by 1644. It was replaced by the Manchu’s [Ch’ing] dynasty. The Manchu’s were basically an eastern form of Mongol invader. A professor of mine characterized them as a bunch of illiterate b*stards. As soon as they conquered China, they totally forgot their own written language and now there are more Manchu language specialists at the Smithsonian than in China. And they traced their ancestry through their maternal line up until they conquered China, so did not know who their fathers were.
The Manchu’s were the ones running things when most of the European contact began, and they “feared their own people and shut down exploration, ship building, metal working and much else.”.
Paternalist nonsense.
Obama while not, probably being a neolib, has been a neolib fellow traveler and a neolib is a neocon-lite, at best.
Obama indeed pressured Maliki under the table to get a SOFA and was denied. Truthfully Maliki realized any Iraqi government so extending US stay would be rightfully seen as
a US/Israeli puppet and the insurgencies would have intensified from all directions.
One thing the more honest neocons will never admit–the US will have no friends in the Mideast to amount to anything as long as it is allied with Israel. Any friends
will be temporary, angling for any transitory assistance they can receive until they are string enough to turn on US presence.
And who could blame them? (Except many have paid for this because US assistance usually isn’t worth the cost to get it in the medium run.)
“Immigration is the Trojan Horse of jihad” I wish I could remember where I heard this…
“the US will have no friends in the Mideast to amount to anything as long as it is allied with Israel. ”
Who would you list as “friends in the Mideast to amount to anything?”
There are none. The Shah was a friend until Carter deposed him in a misguided attempt to install a “saint” as leader.
Mubarak was a friend and Obama deposed him in a vain attempt to befriend the Muslim Brotherhood.
To Ken Hoop – Maliki was just as brutal as Saddam and his government was far more corrupt than Saddam’s. The mian difference between Maliki and Saddam was that Maliki was a lot less competent.