GEOPOLITICAL STRATEGIES

International Occupying Power Will Solve Israeli Palestinian Conflict

By Con George-Kotzabasis reply to:

Watching Death Day and Night So Close By...

By Steve Clemons Washington Note

All those who continue to approach this tragic conflict, which emanates from an array of past soft failed policies implemented by the U.S., the EU, and their Middle East allies, with olive branches in their hands and a new “credible peace negotiation process” wishfully hoping that once they lay this conflict on their Procrustean bed of peace they will put this conflict to sleep for ever after, are like “certain octogenarians who hurl themselves at women to whom they are no longer capable of doing any serious danger”, to quote Marcel Proust.

Clemons who is an expert fisherman who finds and fishes aggressors from the depths of the ocean has found the aggressor of Gaza being Ehud Barak the Defense Minister of Israel who, according to Clemons, is “itching to manage a war.” So to Clemons the threat to more than half a million Israelis who live and work in the proximate range of Quassam rockets is merely an Israeli ‘itch’.

Another one on TWN, not an octogenarian but in one’s robust youthful prime, sails through the Clashing Rocks of the Bosporus without his dove and the help of Orpheus’s music  and without his Medea, unlike Jason, on erroneous routes in search of the Golden Fleece of peace in the Middle East. Dan Kervick, in his well-crafted narrative but badly-crafted strategic thinking, argues that it’s an error to think that by killing few bad actors and destroying their organizations one could resolve the problem, as those who have been killed will be replaced by other “Hamases”.

On this issue, he is unwilling--for understandable reasons who loathes to concede, that despite the heavy price, Iraq has been a tremendous success of the Bush-Cheney administration-- to learn the lessons of the Surge in Iraq and the irrefutable evidence as presented by Bob Woodward in his new book, that it was the clandestine operations of Special Forces that killed al-Qaeda and al-Sadrist operatives in Iraq that has brought the country on the threshold of democracy. Where are the signs that those leaders of the insurgency in Iraq that have been killed are to be replaced by others? Haven’t they who escaped the deadly American grip all run to Afghanistan and Pakistan? Providing the Iraq government and its Western allies are vigilant and are prepared to take severe measures at the first signs of an al-Qaeda or al-Sadrist resurgence in the country there will be no renascence of a new insurgency in Iraq.

As for Kervick’s smart Alec comment that Israel is shooting at Palestinian “pea-shooters”, one can only say that he makes a farce out of a great danger. Hamas acquired dozens of Iranian-made Fazr-3 missiles that could reach nuclear warheads at Dimona. Are these “pea-shooters”?

More seriously, Brzezinski says that the Israelis and the Palestinians have failed to rise to a level of strategic, forward-looking maturity to solve this problem and therefore the burden must fall on others such as the US and Europe and their Arab allies. I would agree with this proposition but with one important rider. The burden must be extended beyond its diplomatic purview. They must put troops on the ground. They must place an international garrison of troops in areas of Palestine where recalcitrant elements of Hamas and other terrorist organizations operate and continue to launch their rockets into Israel not as peace-keepers but as peace-enforcers, with the mandate that this international garrison will operate as an occupying power with the use of its military armaments that are related to such a status against Palestinian militants.

This is the hard way to peace and to the establishment of a Palestinian state and not in the misguided search for diplomatic Golden Fleeces of Peace.

Hic Rhodus hic Salta

By Con George-Kotzabasis reply to:

Watching Death Day and Night So Close By...

By Steve Clemons Washington Note

All those who continue to approach this tragic conflict, which emanates from an array of past soft failed policies implemented by the U.S., the EU, and their Middle East allies, with olive branches in their hands and a new “credible peace negotiation process” wishfully hoping that once they lay this conflict on their Procrustean bed of peace they will put this conflict to sleep for ever after, are like “certain octogenarians who hurl themselves at women to whom they are no longer capable of doing any serious danger”, to quote Marcel Proust.

Clemons who is an expert fisherman who finds and fishes aggressors from the depths of the ocean has found the aggressor of Gaza being Ehud Barak the Defense Minister of Israel who, according to Clemons, is “itching to manage a war.” So to Clemons the threat to more than half a million Israelis who live and work in the proximate range of Quassam rockets is merely an Israeli ‘itch’.

Another one on TWN, not an octogenarian but in one’s robust youthful prime, sails through the Clashing Rocks of the Bosporus without his dove and the help of Orpheus’s music  and without his Medea, unlike Jason, on erroneous routes in search of the Golden Fleece of peace in the Middle East. Dan Kervick, in his well-crafted narrative but badly-crafted strategic thinking, argues that it’s an error to think that by killing few bad actors and destroying their organizations one could resolve the problem, as those who have been killed will be replaced by other “Hamases”.

On this issue, he is unwilling--for understandable reasons who loathes to concede, that despite the heavy price, Iraq has been a tremendous success of the Bush-Cheney administration-- to learn the lessons of the Surge in Iraq and the irrefutable evidence as presented by Bob Woodward in his new book, that it was the clandestine operations of Special Forces that killed al-Qaeda and al-Sadrist operatives in Iraq that has brought the country on the threshold of democracy. Where are the signs that those leaders of the insurgency in Iraq that have been killed are to be replaced by others? Haven’t they who escaped the deadly American grip all run to Afghanistan and Pakistan? Providing the Iraq government and its Western allies are vigilant and are prepared to take severe measures at the first signs of an al-Qaeda or al-Sadrist resurgence in the country there will be no renascence of a new insurgency in Iraq.

As for Kervick’s smart Alec comment that Israel is shooting at Palestinian “pea-shooters”, one can only say that he makes a farce out of a great danger. Hamas acquired dozens of Iranian-made Fazr-3 missiles that could reach nuclear warheads at Dimona. Are these “pea-shooters”?

More seriously, Brzezinski says that the Israelis and the Palestinians have failed to rise to a level of strategic, forward-looking maturity to solve this problem and therefore the burden must fall on others such as the US and Europe and their Arab allies. I would agree with this proposition but with one important rider. The burden must be extended beyond its diplomatic purview. They must put troops on the ground. They must place an international garrison of troops in areas of Palestine where recalcitrant elements of Hamas and other terrorist organizations operate and continue to launch their rockets into Israel not as peace-keepers but as peace-enforcers, with the mandate that this international garrison will operate as an occupying power with the use of its military armaments that are related to such a status against Palestinian militants.

This is the hard way to peace and to the establishment of a Palestinian state and not in the misguided search for diplomatic Golden Fleeces of Peace.

Hic Rhodus hic Salta

Israel Distorted by Lowenstein's and Slezak's Lens

A reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to:

Gaza distorted by media lens by Antony Lowenstein and Peter Slezak

On Line Opinion January 2, 2009

 

One could re-write this article under the title “Israel Distorted by Lowenstein’s and Slezak’s Lens”. The lives of 900,000 Israelis that live and work within the range of the Quassam rockets are threatened on a daily basis and their freedom of movement is infringed, which is a cardinal principle of human rights, as they are enforced to live on a daily basis in-and-out of shelters, and L and S with a sleight of hand transform this threat and abrogation of freedom of movement into a failure of the media and of politicians to acknowledge the transgressor in this conflict which to them clearly is the terrorist government of Israel.

 

Guilty to the brim of his cup of consciousness that he does not support Israel in this deadly conflict, Lowenstein—as I don’t know whether Slezak too is a Jew—attempts to cover up his “turncoatedness” to Israel under the slogan of  “tough love” and furtively place himself as a true friend of Israel.  True friendship however is shown when friends rush along to help someone who is in a critical situation, like Israel is and has been for a long time. Lowenstein has no love for Israel.

 

The Fallacy of the Existence of Moderate Muslims

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A response to: Egyptian complicity exposes deep fear of Iran

By Antoun Issa On Line opinion January 07, 2009

 

It’s good to see that the enemies of freedom and of the values of Western civilization in our midst can write uncensored under the freedom of expression and expose themselves for what they are.

It’s a well known adage that it’s in critical situations, such as presently in Gaza, that one reveals his true beliefs. And Antoun Issa is a perfect example of this. In his reverential support of Hamas-Hezbollah and its state sponsors Iran and Syria and in his identification of the West’s “devil”, he exposes himself to be just another fanatic of the Diaspora of the Muslim Brotherhood.  In two paragraphs following each other in his article he states and condemns the perfidy of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan to make “a deal with the devil”, without however naming the latter, which obviously is America. This is the pre-eminent slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaeda, i.e., the Great Satan America, under which they recruit the holy warriors of Mohammed. Antoun by adopting this slogan and characterizing America as the “devil” shows himself to be, if not a holy warrior in the flesh, definitively a holy warrior in the spirit.

Moreover, he exposes the fallacy of so many in the West who insist that if only their governments relinquished their ‘Islamophobia’ and supported the moderate Muslims, the latter would have taken up the cudgels against the extremists.  Antoun makes it quite clear that the “Arab street” is in full support of Hamas-Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood. And is this surprising, when their radical imams are preaching and indoctrinating for years now their ‘open-mouthed’ credulous flock the great evils that afflict the West and especially America? The only Muslims that reasonably can be classified as moderates are the ones who don’t pray five times a day and those who don't believe that all infidels will go to hell. And one can count these with one’s fingers.