Obama

US Foreign Policy, Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood

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The Obama administration, though they would not characterize it as such nor have much desire to acknowledge it at all, have attempted  a strategic detente with the “moderate” elements of political Islam.

This policy has not been entirely consistent; Syria, for example, is a quagmire the administration has wisely refrained from wading directly into despite the best efforts of R2P advocates to drag us there.  But more importantly, under President Obama the US  supported the broad-based  Arab Spring popular revolt against US ally, dictator Hosni Mubarak, and pushed the subsequent ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Libyan revolution against the entirely mad Colonel Gaddafi. These appear to be geopolitical “moves” upon which the Obama administration hopes to build.

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Gun Trafficking

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…high-powered weapons being provided to someone who should not pass a basic background check.

The first four F-16 fighters are on their way to  Mohamed Morsi’s Egypt. The total package will be 20 planes, all being paid for out of your tax dollars.

As I noted here, each F-16 is equipped with a M61-A1 Vulcan gun—the capabilities of which vastly exceed those of any “assault rifle”—in addition to considerable other weaponry.

And while providing this weaponry to the Morsi regime, the Obama administration actually wanted to send a bill to our traditional ally, France, for the logistical support we have provided them during their Mali operation. The total amount of the payment demand (which was dropped after France went public with its criticism) was about $17-19 million. This amount of money is very close to the cost of one of the 20 F-16s we are providing to Egypt.

Case Study in Conservative Cruelty: George Will

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I don’t think George Will meant to be cruel when he wrote his recent article “The Time Bomb in Obamacare?” but he was and it is a recurring conservative mistake. Will focused on the law and the constitution. He found a bomb and he imagines he is a good bomb squad officer by analyzing the bomb and figuring out how it is going to blow up. What he missed, and it is crucial, is the vital step of clearing away the civilians. That is a cruel oversight and hurts the conservative cause. You have to make sure that people understand that there is a bomb and which direction to run so they do not get blown up.

The immediate threat for ordinary people is not Obamacare’s constitutional status, but what it will do to ordinary american’s access to care. Institutions that are caught in the payment squeeze will triage because otherwise they go broke and close, which would maximize suffering. Triage means that the lack of funds will cause them to try to maximize who they can save and cut off who they can’t afford to save. If you are going to be triaged, you need to know and you need to make alternate arrangements to pay cash, figure out how to live without needed care, or get your affairs in order. The later people figure this out, the more pain, suffering, and death Obamacare is going to cause.

Nothing George Will said about the law is wrong. By focusing on the Constitution and the law to the exclusion of the upcoming suffering of the people he ended up reinforcing a pernicious stereotype, one conservatives would do well to lose. Ultimately, the conservative focus on the law and the Constitution has the effect of reducing suffering and increasing the happiness of the people. This approach would be greatly increased in effectiveness if conservatives would directly say so instead of assuming people already knew. A great many people do not know and the conservative brand is suffering for it.

How About Gun Control for Terrorist-Sympathizing Anti-Semitic National Leaders?

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Well, it took a few days, but the news about Egyptian leader Mohamed Morsi’s anti-Semitic rant (from late 2010..he referred to Israeli Jews as “bloodsuckers” and “descendents of apes and pigs”) has finally been picked up by traditional media outlets. (A video of the speech, with English subtitles, can be found here.)

We already knew about Morsi’s demands that the U.S. release  Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is currently serving a life sentence for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Morsi is considered to be “one of the world’s leading theologians of terrorism.”

We already knew about Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood connections, about his centralization of power, about his affinity for Sharia law. We already knew about the increasing oppression of Christians in Egypt.

So why is the U.S. proceeding with plans to give Egypt 20 F-16 fighters and 200 Abrams tanks?

Hey President Obama–you want to talk about guns?

The F-16 carries an M61A1 Vulcan gun, which fires 20mm projectiles at the rate of 6000 rounds per minute, in addition to various ground-attack and air-to-air missiles.

The Abrams tank carries a 120mm smoothbore gun with a muzzle velocity of more than a mile per second…even with an earlier generation of ammunition it could penetrate 22 inches of armor at more than a mile, and this performance has since been improved. The Abrams also carries three machine guns and a sophisticated ballistic computer system.

So, Mr Obama…do you think Mohamed Morsi can pass the background check to qualify for the ownership of such weapons?

 

“Sustaining” your Way to Serfdom as a Grand Strategy

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Originally posted at Zenpundit.com

Friend of the blog, commenter L.C. Rees, likes to point out that one of the most important part of a grand strategy, particularly one that is maintained despite evidence of being a geopolitical failure, are the domestic political effects that work to the advantage of the faction supporting it.  In my view, grand strategy usually has a political or cultural evolutionary component and, human nature being unchanging, Rees’s cynical observation has merit.

Last year, a couple of JCS aides/field grade officers wrote a grossly  overpraised paper that was pushed by Anne-Marie Slaughter, Thomas Friedman and assorted worthies, that purported to be about a new grand strategy with which America could navigate the world. Mostly it centered on a preference for an America being run by a vaguely EU-like, technocratic, regime under the rubric of “sustainment”, in which the authors wisely folded in a number of  shibboleths popular with the corporate-liberal upper class who write large donation checks to think tanks or make their living in public policy and academia.

The talk of this nature died down when the election cycle began, but the themes were recently revived by the New America Foundation’s Grand Strategy Project whose director had an op-ed in Foreign Policy to reintroduce this agenda to the chattering classes now that the pesky voters are out of the way until 2014:

A New U.S. Grand Strategy  

….Walkable  communities:  The first pool of demand is homegrown. American tastes have changed from the splendid isolation of the suburbs to what advocates are calling the “five-minute lifestyle” — work, school, transit, doctors, dining, playgrounds, entertainment all within a five-minute walk of the front door. From 2014 to 2029, baby boomers and their children, the millennial generation, will converge in the housing marketplace — seeking smaller homes in walkable, service-rich, transit-oriented communities. Already, 56 percent of Americans  seek this lifestyle  in their next housing purchase. That’s roughly three times the demand for such housing after World War II.
If only Bismarck had included some “walkable communities” for Prussia, Europe might have avoided the tragedy of World War I.
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