COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Saturday, January 19, 2013

This week, while the guys McCain and the Obama administration aligned us with in Libya (and would like to align us with in Syria) were busy taking Americans and other foreigners hostage in Algeria, in addition to using Qaddafi’s arsenal to fight the French in Mali, McCain was working his magic in Cairo.



I wonder if the jihadists of eastern Libya are still “heroes” to John McCain. That’s what he called them — “my heroes” — after he changed on a dime from chummy Qaddafi tent guest to rabid Qaddafi scourge.
See, the senator and his allies in the Obama-Clinton State Department had a brilliant notion: The reason the “rebels” of eastern Libya hated America so much had nothing to do with their totalitarian, incorrigibly anti-Western ideology. No, no: The problem was that we sided with Qaddafi, giving the dictator — at the insistence of, well, McCain and the State Department — foreign aid, military assistance, and international legitimacy. If we just threw Qaddafi under the bus, the rebels would surely become our grand democratic allies.
This, of course, was a much more sophisticated theory than you’d get from lunatics like Michele Bachmann. Sit down for this, because I know it’s hard to believe anyone could spout such nutter stuff, but Bachmann actually opposed U.S. intervention in Libya. She claimed — stop cackling! — that many of McCain’s heroes might actually be jihadists ideologically hostile to the U.S. and linked to groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the terror enterprise’s North African franchise. She even thought — yeah, I know, crazy — that if Qaddafi were deposed, the heroes would get their hands on his arsenal, ship a lot of it to AQIM havens in places such as Mali and Algeria, and maybe even turn rebel strongholds such as Benghazi into death traps for Americans.
Good thing we listened to McCain, no?
This week, while the guys the senator and the Obama administration aligned us with in Libya (and would like to align us with in Syria) were busy taking Americans and other foreigners hostage in Algeria, in addition to using Qaddafi’s arsenal to fight the French in Mali, McCain was working his magic in Cairo.
An unfortunate hiccup: McCain and his entourage, including fellow Libya hawk Lindsey Graham, showed up on President Mohamed Morsi’s doorstep just as it was revealed that Morsi, while a top Muslim Brotherhood official in 2010, had inveighed against Jews, calling them “blood-suckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs” and claiming it was incumbent on Egyptians to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” toward them.
Thank goodness Morsi was able to explain to McCain that his remarks had been “taken out of context.” I mean, you can see how that could happen, right? You’re making a few benign remarks about perpetuating hatred for enemies you describe as subhuman and all of a sudden they’re calling you an anti-Semite. Why, next thing you know, they’ll be saying Morsi could be an Islamic supremacist who is hellbent on imposing a sharia constitution on Egypt when he’s not otherwise rolling out the red carpet for Hamas and demanding the release of the Blind Sheikh!
Not to worry: McCain & Co. have promised to go to bat for Egypt’s swell president. Sure, he has imposed a sharia constitution just as crazies like Michele Bachmann predicted the Muslim Brotherhood would do if it took power. That would be the same sharia that, less than two years ago, McCain condemned as “anti-democratic — at least as far as women are concerned.” Back then, McCain was warning that the Brotherhood had to be kept out of the government if there was to be any hope for democracy in Egypt. After all, he explained, the Brothers “have been involved with other terrorist organizations.”
Now, however, McCain says he will push for American taxpayers to fork up another $480 million for Morsi. Or, to be accurate, borrow another $480 million. You see, the United States is already so deep in the red that a $16.3 trillion debt ceiling is not high enough. In fact, we’re such a basket case that our debt-service and “entitlement” payments alone put us in a quarter-trillion-dollar deficit hole even before we borrow and print another trillion-plus for such ancillary expenses as the Defense Department, the Obama family’s vacations, and the $80-odd million that funds “democratization” programs at McCain’s International Republican Institute. But hey, no problem — what’s another $480 million on top of the $2 billion–plus the Obama administration has already extended to Morsi’s regime . . . to say nothing of the sizable U.S. taxpayer chunk of the $4.8 billion IMF loan the Brotherhood government is also about to get its mitts on?
Naturally, “extremist” conservatives like Michele Bachmann are wet blankets when it comes to this gravy train, too. Get this: She thinks that when you get to the point where you have to borrow in order to pay the interest on the loans you already can’t pay off, somebody needs to cut off your credit line — not inflate it by another two or three trill. Even more daft: She thinks that if you subsidize an organization, like the Brotherhood, that promotes sharia and Hamas, you’re apt to get more sharia and more terrorism.
But look, that’s the kind of passé thinking we’ve come to expect from Bachmann. She’s the one, you may recall, who had the audacity to argue last year that it might not be a good idea for the secretary of state to keep as a key staffer a woman who worked for several years with a notorious al-Qaeda financial backer whose “charity” is formally designated as a terrorist organization — indeed, worked with him at a sharia-promotional journal he founded and in charge of which he put her parents, Muslim Brotherhood operatives (the surviving one of whom runs an Islamist organization, the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child, that is part of an umbrella entity called the Union for Good — a designated terrorist organization run by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the notorious Muslim Brotherhood jurist).
Congresswoman Bachmann was acting on the obviously irrational belief that Muslim Brotherhood influences in our government might lead to pro-Islamist policies detrimental to American security and interests — as if the State Department might tell pro-American Egyptian military rulers that they should stand down so the Brotherhood could take over; as if the Obama administration might order that information about Islamist ideology be purged from the materials used to train our intelligence agents; as if the Brotherhood, even as it counted its American aid dollars, would impose sharia, prosecute its detractors, and green-light the persecution of minority Christians.
Such insane, Islamophobic scaremongering! Insane enough that McCain, between praising his Islamist “heroes” and championing ever more funding for Islamist Egypt, made certain to lambaste Bachmann on the floor of the Senate over her concerns about Brotherhood infiltration of our government – leading other influential Republicans to follow suit. And now, aping that display, People for the American Way — “PAW,” the outfit created by a hard-left Hollywood icon to smear Robert Bork and derail his Supreme Court nomination — is campaigning to have Bachmann booted from the House Intelligence Committee.
There is a war on over the course of American foreign policy and the security of the United States. The Left has aligned with the Brotherhood — some naïvely relying on the fiction that the Brothers are not the enemy vanguard, others seeing the Brothers as comrades in the quest for a utopian, post-American future. In opposition, the GOP can either continue looking to McCain for leadership or rally behind Bachmann the way the Left always circles the wagons around its stalwarts.
Anyone want to bet me on which way the Republicans will go?
 Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the executive director of the Philadelphia Freedom Center. He is the author, most recently, of Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, which was published by Encounter Books.

18 comments:

  1. Why are we involved in this mess? How do we benefit from it? It is a fight that should not concern us. We have enough of our own problems without sinking deeper and deeper into the sewer of the Middle East. All of it.

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  2. I called all this..

    We used to have a brain.

    We should support nations that we share values with. And yes, that means ISRAEL

    We should NOT support, with billions of dollars, hundreds of tanks, thousands of anti-aircraft missiles, fighter jets, trade nations and groups that want to MURDER AMERICANS.

    I TOLD YOU SO....

    But back then deuce and company's hard one was against ISRaEL.

    Congrats Deuce your NEW bbf's are jihadists, just as your PAL rat has said, America's leadership is PALS with them....

    Learn it, love it and embrace your new friends...

    Hope you love the taste of islamic ass early in the morning...

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  3. It seems that those who want no part of the middle east are quick to defend Chuck Hagel.

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  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  5. You want to post something with un-documented charges, put a name to it.

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    Replies
    1. un-documented charges?

      hardly....

      http://www.ploughshares.org/who-we-are/board

      Back to that old standard of no standards for anyone except those that are Pro-Israel.

      hypocrite.

      Delete
  6. I am quick to defend Hagel and I want out of the Middle East except on a retaliatory basis if we are struck from any power there. Hagel has first hand experience of the consequences of US politicians getting the US involved in wars that are hostile to the lives and welfare of ordinary US citizens. Will he be cowed by the lobbyists just itching to part the US from money and deepen our involvement with the belligerents of the ME, probably.

    You read the nonsense posted above that we share values with Israel that are somehow unique to Israel. Legal values? Religious freedom? Treatment of minorities? Socialism? Government?

    Israel is distinguished because it is far superior to every other Middle Eastern country, but it is no bargain when compared to countries outside of the ME.

    We have more in common with every European country and most of the Americas than we do with ANY country in the ME.

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    1. Five or so of the paragraphs in the article of the post praise Bachmann. I like her and feel she's been mistreated. Given hardly any play in the debates, for instance.

      But look, that’s the kind of passé thinking we’ve come to expect from Bachmann. She’s the one, you may recall, who had the audacity to argue last year that it might not be a good idea for the secretary of state to keep as a key staffer a woman who worked for several years with a notorious al-Qaeda financial backer whose “charity” is formally designated as a terrorist organization — indeed, worked with him at a sharia-promotional journal he founded and in charge of which he put her parents, Muslim Brotherhood operatives (the surviving one of whom runs an Islamist organization, the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child, that is part of an umbrella entity called the Union for Good — a designated terrorist organization run by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the notorious Muslim Brotherhood jurist).

      Nice to see her getting a little friendly press.

      Delete
    2. deuce your hatred is showing AGAIN....

      But I love this one..

      "We have more in common with every European country and most of the Americas than we do with ANY country in the ME. "

      You are correct, America has committed genocide like most European nations at some point, Israel has not.

      But your lack of acceptance of the UNIQUE relationship that America has with Israel proves that you cannot see the forest for the trees...

      Delete
  7. I’ll exempt Kosovo and Albania from the European group.

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  8. Steve Emerson for President, Andy for Attorney General.

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  9. "“nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred”"

    That's what Obama's Grandad, Mom, and he and Michelle did, so what is it about that that's wrong?

    Just a religious, family, or cultural tradition, depending on the neighborhood in question.

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  10. Let's not forget the NEA, Colleges, and Foundations whose Founders lived in a World long ago and far away.

    Christianity, evil, abortion, good.

    I wonder what Mavis Leno is up to?
    She was for women's rights in Afghanistan prior to 9-11.

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  11. 24. Unsk

    The acts of our Boy Emperor Buraq Hussein and the Institutional Republicans have much in common: they both feign opposition to our enemies.

    This Algerian raid and the many more future atrocities to come will just demand “we do something” and give in to the Islamofascists, as in trade for the Blind Sheik. Just like we “had to do something” to stop the killing in Gaza and give Morsi his $4.8 Billion.

    Similarly, Boehner and McConnell feign opposition to our big government overlords, but it was Boehner who shepherded the “Fiscal Crisis” tax bill and “Sandy” obscenely bloated hurricane relief bill. Interestingly both got a small minority of Pub votes. One would think he was a Democrat Speaker. It’s all Kabuki theatre with a prearranged ending: We get screwed.

    But the worst part is just starting. The intimidation. Boehner is already intimidating Conservatives who tell the truth. A client of mine was telling me of a NPR radio interview with the CEO of WholeFoods where the NPR guy was trying to intimidate the CEO against explaining the disastrous effects of Obamacare. Now we get “Challengers from the Sidelines’ and other unconstitutional rot aimed at our military. Makes my blood boil.

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    1. .

      It is not only NPR. Take CNN. There is a guy there named Don Lemon. He's on during weekdays. If he's interviewing you, don't criticize Obama if you want to walk out of there with your head.

      The guy is an embarrassing drama queen.

      In an interview with a guest who pointed out that gun crimes had been dropping for some time, Don started out his little hissy fit with,

      Listen, for the past three days, i have been on the verge of tears every second, and most of the people here have been crying 24 hours straight. Yes, we need to address mental health, but mental health in this particular issue -- let's not get it twisted -- is a secondary issue. from Breithart

      From RCP, (this one's for Ash)

      CNN's Don Lemon discusses the possibility of profiling white men in an attempt to prevent gun violence and decrease the amount of mass shootings. Lemon argues that white males between the ages of 18 and 25 were behind nearly all recent mass killings.

      Don is hysterical, or I should say gets hysterical.

      He had a recent dust-up with Jonah Hill, the chubby comedian in (21 Jump Street) because he felt Hill wasn't deferential or friendly enough when they met. The Twitter war follows,

      The fight began Thursday night when Lemon took to his Twitter feed and announced, "Said hi to @jonahhill in hotel. Think he thought i was bellman. Didn't know his name til bellman told me. A lesson to always be kind."

      According to several reports, Hill responded with a tweet that he has since deleted: "@DonLemonCNN I said hi what do you want me to do move in with you? I was in a hurry. Didn't realize you were a 12 year old girl. Peace."

      Lemon, who is gay, wrote back, "Hardly. You're not my type. But I know rude. And u were."

      Hill then responded with, "@DonLemonCNN i walked out of the restroom and found you waiting for me. Shook hands, said hi and was on my way. Sorry if you found that rude."


      .

      Delete
  12. January 19, 2013
    American Hostages to Jihad in Algeria: 1640 to Present
    Andrew Bostom


    http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/01/american_hostages_to_jihad_in_algeria_1640_to_present.html


    'Timeless jihad'. Nice phrase. A brief look back at the hostage taking and jihad of the past.

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  13. 56. MachiasPrivateer

    Kin @ 52 – ExxonMobil has the world’s tallest structure built by humans at 12,736 meters. It just has very deep footings. http://preview.tinyurl.com/9629fo8


    Exxon Neftegas Ltd (ENL) has completed drilling the world’s deepest well in the Chayvo oil field on the Sakhalin shelf in the Russian Far East.

    ­The shaft of well Z-44 is 12,376 meter deep, which is the equivalent to 15 times the height of the world tallest skyscraper the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

    “We are proud of this achievement, which furthers the successful implementation of this remarkable project,” ENL chief James Taylor is quoted as saying. Six of the world’s ten deepest wells, including Z-44, have been drilled in Russia for the Sakhalin-1 project using ExxonMobil drilling technology – the so-called “fast drill”, he added.

    If only we could do this on our own continental shelf!

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  14. 53. MachiasPrivateer

    Bloomberg – Energy Rigs in U.S. Slump to 22-Month Low, Baker Hughes Says

    http://preview.tinyurl.com/baubj5t

    Gas and oil rigs in the U.S. dropped for the eighth straight week to the lowest level since March 2011 as energy producers’ demand for new equipment weakened.

    Oil rigs declined by seven to 1,316 this week, the lowest level in almost 10 months, data posted on Baker Hughes Inc. (BHI)’s website show. The gas count dropped by five to 429, the field- services company based in Houston said. Total energy rigs fell by 12 to 1,749.

    I guess BHO is still attacking the USA’s center of gravity!

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