Putin vs. Obama: no contest

The New Neo Posted on by

Go to Drudge today and you’ll see plenty of links that cover Putin’s actions in Syria. Or go to Memeorandum, paying particular attention to this article:

…Putin sees a necessity in humiliating the United States. That’s business. And yet, despite Putin’s obviousness, the White House team and its acolytes publicly scratch their heads and other body parts, saying, “We’re not certain what the Russians intend.”

So let’s help them. Here are Putin’s clear strategic goals:

In the short term, rescue the failing regime of Russia’s ally, Syria’s blood-drenched President Bashar al-Assad. And in doing so, eliminate all opposition groups except ISIS, leaving the United States, Europe and the world with the stark choice of “Assad or Islamic State?”

In the mid-term, create a fait accompli, irreversible circumstances, on the ground in the Middle East (and in Ukraine) that will defeat the next US president even before he takes office.

We come back to the old “fool vs. knave” debate, in the sense of asking this question: is Obama really humiliated? Or, rather does he acquiesce in his own humiliation and consider it a small price to pay to achieve the goal of humiliating—and disempowering—the United States?

I think the latter, although the particular public form it is taking right now confers a bit more personal humiliation than he bargained for. As for his lackeys—such as Kerry—I’m not even sure they’re aware that they’re being humiliated.

But there’s this:

The attacks came despite President Barack Obama sitting down with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Monday at the United Nations for 90 minutes of what both camps called “business-like” talks.

One week ago, Kerry — despite being in frequent contact with Lavrov — told reporters that Russia’s deployment of war planes was consistent with their only defending their own base.

And just hours before the strikes began he appeared on CNN to say that Russia’s involvement could be an “opportunity” to persuade them to apply pressure on Assad to moderate his behavior.

[NOTE: All those conservatives who refused to vote for Romney in 2012—happy now?]

[ADDENDUM: More here on Putin and Obama in Syria.]

About that conversation on illegal immigration and Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Speaking of “conversations,” there’s one that’s been going on in a previous thread that I want to highlight.

Commenter “RickZ” says—agreeing with Trump—that we wouldn’t be having our national “conversation” on illegal immigration but for Trump.

There is no question in my mind that the conversation about illegal immigration has revved up again since Trump. But we were already having a heated conversation about it before that, off and on and off and on. It began last summer with the influx of child/teen illegal “migrants.” It was a big, big deal at the time, but actually, the conversation had begun a bit earlier, when Obama issued his executive order and bypassed Congress. However, as I said, the “conversation” reached a fever pitch last summer. In fact, even some of my liberal friends were perturbed about the issue; that’s how I know people were talking about it outside the conservative bubble, because some of my friends brought it up with me. That’s highly unusual.

However, as I said, with the advent of Trump’s candidacy it was revived as a hot topic again, perhaps becoming even hotter than before. My recollection is that it heated up again in part because of the MSM, not in spite of them. Originally the media had seized gleefully on Trump’s “rapist” remark because they thought it would hurt him. His comments about illegal immigrants in his kickoff speech probably would probably have gone without getting such widespread traction or emphasis but for that attempt at a “gotcha” moment by the MSM.

It’s ironic, I think, that the MSM’s attempt to “get” him ended up focusing attention on the whole topic in a way that has helped Trump in the polls and will probably help him in the primaries.

Take a look at Trump’s speech announcing his candidacy. You’ll see that the illegal immigration part of it was relatively small; there was far more emphasis on a host of other things, particularly trade and China, creating jobs, fighting ISIS, Obamacare, all sorts of things in a very freewheeling discussion. As I said, the MSM and the left seized on the “rapist” remark and ran with it, thinking it would sink him. Trump doubled down, got a lot of positive attention for that, and focused more and more on it in his subsequent campaign.

That has forced everyone else to focus more on it, as well.

[NOTE: It is telling that, during the summer of 2014, I thought I really ought to start an “immigration” category in the right sidebar of the blog because I’d written so many posts on the topic. But I was lazy and didn’t do it. It wasn’t until the Trump candidacy that I decided I absolutely must create such a category; that reflects the “heating up” of which I’ve spoken. Since then, I’ve tried to go back and place all the relevant older posts in it. But although I started and I think that many of them are now in there, I haven’t gotten around to completing the task yet.]

Rubio on the anger of the Republican base towards Congress

The New Neo Posted on by

Rubio, on Hannity yesterday. He’s among my three leading candidates at the moment: Cruz, Fiorina, Rubio, in no special order. With Carson not so very far behind. [I can’t seem to rid the video of the initial advertisement, which is brief. The part about the base and Congress begins around 3:18, but the earlier part is well worth watching to hear what Rubio has to say about Putin, Syria, and Obama.]

And no, I don’t care so very much about his flirtation with the Gang of Eight earlier in his Senate tenure, although that action of his certainly figures into the base’s anger. I don’t like what he did back then, but I think his change of heart is actual and not a ploy. He’s smart, he’s young, and he’s unflappable (except for the sweating; but some of my best friends are big sweaters):

[ADDENDUM: Here’s a quote from a speech Rubio made; not sure when he said it, but I found the quote at Ace’s:

Barack Obama’s not a failure because he was a first-term senator, or even for lack of experience. He’s had seven years of presidential experience and, in my mind, he’s still failing. Barack Obama has failed as president because his ideas don’t work. And they wouldn’t have worked if he’d been in the senate for 40 years. And they wouldn’t have worked if he was the CEO of a major company. And they wouldn’t have worked if he was a governor. His ideas do not work. They don’t work in America, they’ve never worked anywhere in the world. Here’s what works: free enterprise, a limited government, a strong national security. That’s what we need from our next president.

Good points. Also, of course, self-serving, because Rubio is himself a first-term senator, although he’s already served considerably longer than Obama had when Obama began his presidency run.]

Predicting the 2016 race

The New Neo Posted on by

Fred Barnes says that “everybody got everything wrong” in trying to predict the 2016 race:

Nearly everything that was expected to happen in the 2016 presidential race hasn’t, and many things that weren’t expected have. The rise of Donald Trump””even that he would run””was not predicted. Nor was the fall of Scott Walker or the weakness of Jeb Bush’s candidacy. Polls have proved to be unreliable indicators of where the Republican and Democratic campaigns are headed. Hillary Clinton’s coronation as Democratic nominee, we were told, was a sure thing. Now she’s sliding toward underdog status…

The biggest change is the revolt of angry conservatives, who make up a large chunk of the GOP base.

I’ve got respect for Barnes, but my goodness: anyone with even a cursory familiarity with conservative blogs (or who has listened to Mark Levin’s show at least once, as I have) has to have known about the angry conservatives for at least the past four years, and probably a great deal longer than that.

And I’m sure I’m not the only one who doubted Jeb Bush’s drawing power in 2016, despite his money. In a post in early April titled “Jeb Bush: the candidate without a constituency” I wrote the following:

I’ve heard for years about the Republican “establishment” pushing this candidate or that candidate on the rank and file. Most of the time it’s seemed untrue to me.

But it seems absolutely on target with the current talk of Jeb Bush for 2016. He has no natural constituency. There is nothing special””or especially appealing””about him as a candidate. His name, IMHO, is a liability rather than an asset, both with Republicans and with Democrats.

So who would be voting for Bush in a primary? Darned if I know.

[NOTE: In choosing a category for this post, I thought about including him in “people of interest.” But the opposite is the point: he’s a person without interest.]

That’s not to say that Bush couldn’t pull it off somehow. But I consider it, and have always considered it, a longshot. One advantage Bush has, however—and it could end up mattering—is that aforementioned money. The candidates with less support will drop out because they can’t sustain their campaigns without an influx of money, and Bush already has a big war chest. Trump, of course, can go on and on, even without many donations, as long as he’s willing to spend his own money. Money is a big factor in campaigns, but as we’re learning with Bush, it’s not the only thing.

As for Hillary Clinton, she’s fallen further faster than I would have thought. It’s not so much because of the emails, although that hasn’t helped; I doubt her base cares much about them. It’s because her performances when put on the spot by a couple of tougher-than-usual questions has been less than stellar. She doesn’t appear sharp and she doesn’t appear trustworthy; she seems shifty, evasive, uncertain, false.

You may say that she’s always seemed that way. But if so, it’s a great deal more apparent now, so apparent that even some of her base is uneasy and is casting about for an alternative. Unfortunately for them, no really good alternative has shown up. If Biden is the best they can offer, he certainly might win, but I wouldn’t call that a strong candidate.

Who was it who said that Republicans were the party of old white folk? It appears right now to be the Democrats who answer to that description.

Russia and Syria: maybe this…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is what Obama meant by a red line in Syria:

Russia’s launch of air strikes against rebel targets in Syria will not alter the strategy of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, American officials have said.

“The US-led coalition will continue to fly missions over Iraq and Syria as planned and in support of our international mission to degrade and destroy ISIL,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

Explaining the dramatic sequence of events, Kirby said: “A Russian official in Baghdad this morning informed US Embassy personnel that Russian military aircraft would begin flying anti-ISIL missions today over Syria.

“He further requested that US aircraft avoid Syrian airspace during these missions,” he said.

In Syria, between ISIS and Assad there are no good actors. Instead, there are actors of greater or lesser badness, in different ways. Russia and Assad have long been allied, so it’s no surprise that Russia would support him and see the crisis there—and the vacuum left by the US, as I wrote yesterday—as a golden opportunity.

There’s certainly no reason Putin would or should pay much attention to the bluster of President Obama or Secretary of State John Kerry. I don’t think anyone else does, either:

Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s involvement in Syria a possible “opportunity” for the United States.

Kerry predicted, in an interview with CNN’s Elise Labott, that Russia’s presence in Syria means Moscow could find itself in a “complicated” situation that could affect its policy toward the war-torn country and its leader, President Bashar al-Assad.

“If he’s going to side with Assad and with Iran and Hezbollah, he’s going to have a very serious problem with the Sunni countries in the region,” Kerry said of Putin. “That means he … could very well become a target for those Sunni jihadists.”

Kerry explained: “It’s an opportunity for us to force this question of how you actually resolve the question of Syria. And the bottom line is, you cannot resolve it without including the Sunni(s) in a political solution, a political agreement ultimately, and that will mean that you’re going to have to have some kind of transition, some kind of timing. Because as long as Assad is there, you simply can’t make peace. Period.”

Kerry also said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must leave as part of an “orderly transition,” rather than calling for his immediate ouster, marking a change in the U.S. position.

“Assad must this” and “Assad must that.”

I don’t doubt that Putin is in a “complicated” position. I assume he will negotiate it more or less successfully, taking heed of his own best interests. If we entered the fray in Syria more than we already have, we would be in a “complicated” position, too. But we already are in a complicated situation. As I said, there are no good actors there—or, if there are any, they are remarkably weak.

However, I’ve come to assume that our administration will not act in our own best interests.

As time goes by, I keep thinking of that famous moment in the second presidential debate of 2012. You know, the one where Obama snarked back at Romney’s assertion that Russia was our number one geopolitical foe on the world stage with the cute little quip “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”

So, speaking of the 80’s [and in the following excerpt, “Assad” refers to the present-day Assad’s father]:

In the 1980s, Assad’s government established a military cooperation with the Soviet Union. Sophisticated Soviet arms and military advisers helped the development of the Syrian Army, which raised the tension between Israel and Syria. In November 1983, a Soviet delegation arrived in Damascus to discuss the opening of a Soviet naval base in the Syrian city of Tartus. The countries’ relationship encountered problems: Syria had supported Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, while the Soviet Union supported Iraq, and when the rebellion against Yasser Arafat broke out in al-Fatah in 1983, Syria supported the rebels while the Soviet Union supported Arafat. In 1983 the Syrian Foreign Minister Abdul Halim Khaddam visited Moscow. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko argued that Syria and the Soviet Union must resolve their differences concerning the Palestinian movement as stopping the internal conflict would allow the “anti-Imperialist struggle.”

During the diplomatic crisis between the United States and Syria, which escalated into minor clashes, Syrian counted on Soviet help if war should break out. Vladimir Yukhin, the Soviet ambassador in Damascus, expressed his country’s appreciation “for the firm Syrian position in the face of Imperialism and Zionism.” The Soviet attitude did not satisfied Syria completely. Assad’s government considered entering the Warsaw Pact to gain Soviet support and to match the United States and Israel. Syria and the Soviet Union signed the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in October 1980, which was focused on cultural, technical, military, economic, and transport relations.

It was “complicated” back then, too, and in the late 80s, as the USSR faltered within and then fell, the alliance between the two countries was weakened:

The collapse of the Soviet Union on 31 December 1991 marked the end of the main source of Syria’s political and military support for more than two decades.

Then in 2011, with the advent of the Obama administration and the Syrian civil war, the ties between Russia and Assad Junior were strengthened considerably. This move of Putin’s is the latest in a series in which we’ve been caught without influence and without credibility.

[ADDENDUM: And—in news that should be no surprise whatsoever—Putin appears to be bombing anti-Assad forces and not ISIS forces at all:

Hours after the airstrikes took place, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter compared the move to “pouring gasoline on the fire” because it’s contradictory to say that fighting ISIS and supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad can work together.

“It does appear that they were in areas where there probably … were not ISIL forces and that is precisely one of the problems with this whole approach,” said Carter.

Okay, Ash. Let us know what you plan to do about it.]

]

Nature abhors a vacuum

The New Neo Posted on by

And the nature of power is no different:

The baton was officially transferred Monday to the world’s new sole superpower ”” and Vladimir Putin willingly picked it up.

President Obama (remember him?) embraced the ideals espoused by the United Nations’ founders 70 years ago: Diplomacy and “international order” will win over time, while might and force will lose.

Putin, too, appealed to UN laws (as he sees them), but he also used his speech to announce the formation of a “broad international coalition” to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq…

And who’d lead this new coalition? Hint: Moscow has always celebrated the Allies’ World War II victory as a Russian-led fete.

Oh, and if anyone wondered which Syrian players the coalition would rely on as allies, Putin made it clear: “No one but President [Bashar al-]Assad’s armed forces and Kurd militia are fighting the Islamic State.”

Recall this from 2012.

And also this.

See also this, which I wrote in 2009. An excerpt:

If Obama has anything to say about it, there will be further steps in America’s journey of penance and redemption through the mechanism of his presidency…Foreign policy is a major mechanism by which this country will be made level with other countries–just one nation among the rest, stripped of much of its power and its weaponry.

More From F. L. Lucas: on style in writing

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I wrote previously about Lucas here and here.]

Here’s a quote from F. L. Lucas that remains all too true. In fact, I believe it’s only become more true since he wrote it. Although I’m not sure when that was, it had to have been some time between the Second World War and Lucas’ death in 1967:

The two World Wars came in part, like much modern literature and art, because men, whose nature is to tire of everything in turn… tired of common sense and civilization.

Lucas was quite obviously a great prose stylist (he was also a poet, it turns out). What’s more, he wrote a book on style in writing that contains many nuggets of good advice. Some stylish excerpts:

Communication [is] more difficult than we may think. We are all serving life sentences of solitary confinement within our bodies; like prisoners, we have, as it were, to tap in awkward code to our fellow men in their neighboring cells. . . . In some modern literature there has appeared a tendency to replace communication by a private maundering to oneself which shall inspire one’s audience to maunder privately to themselves–rather as if the author handed round a box of drugged cigarettes.

…a writer may cultivate the obscure, to seem profound. But even carefully muddied puddles are soon fathomed. Or he may cultivate eccentricity, to seem original. But really original people do not have to think about being original–they can no more help it than they can help breathing. They do not need to dye their hair green.

…without passion little gets done; yet, without control of that passion, its effects are largely ill or null.

Swedish banks charge you for the privilege of letting them have your money

The New Neo Posted on by

Is this the wave of the future?:

Central bank policymakers had believed they had run out of room to support their respective economies, with their interest rates held close to the floor.

…Cut rates too deeply, [they thought], and savers would end up facing negative returns. In that case, this could encourage people to take their savings out of the bank and hoard them in cash…

[But as] central bank rates have turned negative, the rates offered on bank deposits have followed. Yet rather than stuffing cash under mattresses, people have left their money in the bank or spent it.

This is already happening in Sweden.

One of my first thoughts on reading that people are not pulling their money out of the banks was that perhaps the Swedes are just used to the habit of banking and don’t quite know where else to put their money. After all, a few hundred thousand kronor would be hard to stuff under a mattress, and perhaps anxiety-provoking. And it is true that Sweden already has a very high savings rate.

But wait; it actually may become worse. Some folks in charge have gotten the bright idea of giving people no alternative to banking it or investing it:

One solution is to give savers nowhere else to go. This idea was floated by the Bank of England’s chief economist in recent weeks, who made the case that sub-zero rates will be needed in the near future.

Andy Haldane, a member of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), the UK’s equivalent of the FOMC suggested that to achieve properly negative rates, the abolition of cash itself might be necessary.

Apparently, that’s one reason why the negative interest policy has been successful in Sweden, which is reported to already be practically cashless. If people aren’t used to cash anymore, they may be willing to pay to avoid using it. Of course, cash has the advantage of usually being untraceable, and people may come to value that aspect of it.

The planners aren’t going to boil that cash frog all at once, though. They’ll do it slowly, carefully:

No politician is likely to prohibit cash entirely, at least not until it has already all but disappeared from day to day life. Concerns about surveillance and the power of the state are likely to grow, as electronic money is completely traceable.

“Cash is useful for small transactions, and until it disappears naturally, I would be loathe to say let’s outlaw it,” says Sir Charles.

“Sir Charles” is Sir Charles Bean, former deputy governor at the Bank of England. One of the first steps will be to outlaw large-denomination notes, which are often used in drug transactions.

If you think of it, cash is a form of liberty, isn’t it?

The Middle East “migrants” in Europe: no end in sight

The New Neo Posted on by

Europe has bitten off more than it can chew:

What’s happening right now in Europe far surpasses past migrations…

I don’t see it stopping,” Amin Awad, director of the Middle East and North Africa division of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, told reporters in Geneva. If anything, he said, the thousands of refugees arriving daily at the borders of European countries may be “the tip of the iceberg.”

The warnings came as the impact of the European Union’s decision on Tuesday to apportion 120,000 migrants among member countries ”” in some cases, against their leaders’ wishes ”” continued to ripple across the Continent.

…Up to 10,000 migrants have been entering Austria daily, mostly from Hungary…

What part of “if you reward a behavior you will get more of it” don’t the leaders of Western Europe understand? Why would it surprise anyone that this “migration” is surpassing all previous ones? Previous ones (except for “guest worker” programs) mostly involved bona fide refugees from the horrors of war, rather than welfare-country window shoppers. There are definitely some of the former here, fleeing the horrors. But what percentage of those are coming, compared to what percentage of the opportunistic window-shoppers?

Finland—it’s too cold and boring, say the “migrants,” who are leaving Finland for more temperate climes—lets you know what’s going on.

And the fact that the leaders of the Eastern European countries are not allowed by the EU to say “no” is chilling. This isn’t just an issue that involves sovereignty; this is at the very heart of sovereignty.

I wonder how far…

The New Neo Posted on by

…this effort will get:

…[A]n influential Republican Party official is now seeking the ouster of another GOP leader who has frustrated conservatives: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“McConnell needs to resign!!” Louisiana GOP Chairman Roger Villere wrote in a Facebook posting..

“Mitch is a good and honorable guy, but the base is leaving our party,” Mr. Villere said in an interview with The Washington Times. “I’m out in the field all the time and we have all our elections this year for state offices, and it’s hurting us tremendously with our elections.”

I don’t think this will work, because I don’t think there are enough conservative GOP senators to pressure McConnell sufficiently.

And then there’s the same potential problem as exists with the Boehner ouster: who would replace him?

On the other hand, there’s no question that the base is deeply angry. If the GOP been paying attention to blogs all these years, they’d have learned that—way back in 2012, if not earlier.