How Can Obama’s Middle East Policy Possibly Get Worse? Answer: Look at Syria Barry Rubin

How Can Obama’s Middle East Policy Possibly Get Worse? Answer: Look at Syria

http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2012/05/29/how-can-obamas-middle-east-policy-possibly-get-worse-answer-look-at-syria/?print=1

Some of my readers are unhappy that I keep criticizing President Barak Obama and his government. The problem, however, is that this administration keeps doing terrible things in the Middle East. And the most damning evidence on these actions comes not from Obama’s enemies but from the administration itself and the supportive mass media.

Here’s the latest such item:

“U.S. Hopes Assad Can Be Eased Out with Russia’s Aid,” by Helene Cooper and Mark Landler, in the New York Times.

For almost three years, Obama insisted he would win over the Syrian dictatorship and make it America’s friend rather than Iran’s number-one ally. That was ludicrous. Forced by the uprising to back away from Damascus, the Obama Administration has spent almost a year bumbling about what to do.

The U.S. government’s main activity was to entrust to the Turkish Islamist regime the job of forming an umbrella Syrian opposition leadership. Not surprisingly, Ankara pursued its own interest by assembling a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated group, the Syrian National Congress. Though several members resigned, complaining of the radical Islamist control, the Obama Administration is still trying to force hostile oppositionists to join.

Now the administration has unveiled a new and equally terrible policy. I’ll let the New York Times’ reporters explain it:

“President Obama will push for the departure of President Bashar al-Assad under a plan that calls for a negotiated political settlement that would satisfy Syrian opposition groups but that could leave remnants of Assad’s government in place. The success of the plan hinges on Russia, one of Assad’s staunchest allies, which has strongly opposed his removal. Obama, administration officials said, will press the proposal with President Putin of Russia at their meeting next month. Obama’s national security adviser raised the plan with Putin in Moscow three weeks ago.”

RICK MORAN: TYRANT MUGABE HONORED BY THE U.N…..SEE NOTE PLEASE

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/05/old_tyrants_never_dietheyre_honored_by_the_un.html at May 30, 2012 – 06:02:07 AM CDT

THIS THUG WASTED AND TRASHED ZIMBABWE AND TURNED IT INTO A FAMINE AND EPIDEMIC RIDDEN SEWER. RHODESIA WAS THE MOST PRODUCTIVE AND SELF SUFFICIENT NATION IN AFRICA AND MUGABE (WHO WAS ELECTED BY A POPULAR MAJORITY) WAS THE POSTER BOY FOR THE “NEW AFRICA- ONE MAN ONE VOTE” MOVEMENT….RSK

No, this move by the UN to ask Robert Mugabe, former tyrant of Zimbabwe, accused of ethnic cleansing and bankrupting his country by allowing 10,000% inflation, to be a “leader for tourism” does not show the dysfunctionality of the United Nations. Nor does it show that the UN is a useless, hopeless gaggle of muddle headed nincompoops.

Right on both counts.

Using Robert Mugabe in any capacity, for any reason, under any circumstances reveals the UN to be just plain evil.

Guardian:

Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has been asked by the UN to champion tourism. Photograph: Aaron Ufumeli/EPA/Corbis

With a line-up that includes Drew Barrymore, David Beckham, Orlando Bloom, and Ricky Martin, the UN’s choice of ambassadors has been known to cause raised eyebrows or the odd smirk.

Seldom, however, has there been such anger, or questioning of the organisation’s credibility, as that greeting the appointment of a new international envoy for tourism: Robert Mugabe.

Improbable as it seems, the Zimbabwean president, who is widely accused of ethnic cleansing, rigging elections, terrorising opposition, controlling media and presiding over a collapsed economy, has been endorsed as a champion of efforts to boost global holidaymaking.

NICK CHASE: THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE WHAC-A-MOLE….SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/05/birth_certificate_whac-a-mole.html

THE MEDIA CAN TELL YOU THE COLOR OF THE FIRST LADIES’ UNDIES BUT WILL NOT INVESTIGATE ALL THE UNKNOWNS ABOUT OBAMA…IT WOULD ALL BE SO EASY TO DISMISS IF RECORDS AND TRANSCRIPTS WERE RELEASED…..RSK

Would you like to play a neat parlor game with your friends? Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate forgery contains so many forger’s errors which are visible to the naked eye or which can be seen on your computer under slight magnification that you can play a fun game finding them, either alone or in a contest with your friends. It’s similar to the arcade game Whac-A-Mole, where you pound a mechanical mole back into its hole before it disappears on its own and randomly reappears in another one of the five holes in the game. You can score by time per defect — five points for each one found within two minutes, for example — or by total score — five points for each defect for the length of the game. (Note: Conservatives will generally spot these defects more quickly than liberals do.)

S. FRED SINGER: ROMNEY’S HISTORIC OPPORTUNITY….LOW COST ENERGY TO REFUEL ECONOMIC RECOVERY

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/romneys_historic_opportunity_low-cost_energy_fuels_economic_recovery.html Energy, the lifeblood of the economy, is the Achilles heel of President Barack Obama. Mitt Romney can win the November election if he concentrates his campaign on a sensible energy policy. Mr. Romney will have to make a case not merely against Mr. Obama’s failings but also for why he has the better plan […]

DANIEL GREENFIELD: NOCTURNE IN BLACK AND WHITE

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

The respected black commentator and philosopher Thomas Sowell has described the growing toll of black-on-white violence as a race war. I would take issue with that only because “war” implies a level of organization that supersedes that of the flash mobs.
Most of the riot organizers have moved on to cozier job titles, like Al Sharpton, who has gone from organizing riots and boycotts to holding down a desk at MSNBC and serving as the unofficial White House liaison to the black community. The old riots were usually a combination of organized protest and opportunistic violence. The organized riot is on the decline, but the opportunistic violence is still very much with us.

There are no shortage of what, the media occasionally describes as, “racially-motivated-attacks”. Every society has its outside groups targeted for opportunistic violence. The people you beat up and rob when you’re bored and there’s nothing good on television. These are people whose lives are worth less than yours, against whom your group holds an enduring grudge against and whom the authorities will not intervene to protect.

In America, the outsider is perversely the majority. There was a time when opportunistic violence was white-on-black, but the authorities, both legal and cultural, have done an excellent job of stamping that out. Black-on-white opportunistic violence remains commonplace because it’s safe in the same way that a 19th Century lynch mob was safe. While technically illegal, there is little public outrage over it, and the odds of being prosecuted for it are better than any other form of violence. The flash mob, like the lynch mob, relies on safety in numbers, the complicity of the authorities and the weakness of the system to beat the law.

Imagine for a moment that you are a black teenager or twenty-something, living in a blighted neighborhood, with few job prospects, a lot of free time and a lot of social networking. You know that white people are “bad”, not so much because of the street agitators telling you that white people are the devil, but because the entire society that you live in has been telling you that from Day One.

JOSH ROGIN; DID THE STATE DEPARTMENT JUST CREATE 5,000,000 PALESTINIAN “REFUGEES”????? SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/05/25/did_the_state_department_just_create_5_million_palestinian_refugees

Did the State Department just create 5 million Palestinian refugees?
The U.S. government considers the descendants of Palestinian refugees to be refugees, a State Department official told The Cable, and another top State Department official wrote in a letter to Congress that there are now 5 million Palestinian refugees.

The two new policy statements come in the midst of a fight over whether the United States will start separating, at least on paper, Palestinians who fled what is now Israel in 1948 and 1967 from their descendants.

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday approved unanimously an amendment to the fiscal 2013 State Department and foreign operations appropriations bill that requires the State Department to report on how many of the 5 million Palestinians currently receiving assistance from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) are actually people who were physically displaced from their homes in Israel or the occupied territories, and how many are merely descendants of original refugees.

The amendment, as passed, was watered down by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) from a version proposed by Sen.Mark Kirk (R-IL) that would have required more in-depth reporting on how many UNRWA aid recipients are now living in the West Bank, Gaza, and other countries such as Jordan. An even earlier version of the bill would have made it U.S. policy that Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza, and those who are citizens of countries like Jordan are not, in fact, “refugees.”

The State Department objected strongly to the Kirk amendment, claiming that any U.S. determination of the number or status of refugees was unhelpful and destabilizing and that refugee determinations are a final-status issue that must be negotiated between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

JED BABBIN: THE WHITE HOUSE SIEVE

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/05/29/the-white-house-sieve Leaking away intelligence secrets — even to Hollywood — for re-election advantage. Big leaks can change the course of world events. The leaker behind the Washington Post story identifying nations in which the CIA had secret prisons to hold and interrogate captured terrorists sought to thwart those nations’ cooperation and some of those nations […]

SO WHERE DO YOUR DOLLAR GO WHEN YOU MAKE A DONATION?

As you open your pocketbooks for the next natural disaster, please keep these facts in mind:

The American Red Cross President and CEO Marsha J. Evans’ salary for the year was $951,957 plus expenses.

The United Way President Brian Gallagher receives a $675,000 base salary along with numerous expense benefits.

UNICEF CEO Caryl M. Stern receives $1,900,000 per year (158K) per month, plus all expenses including a ROLLS ROYCE.

Less than 5 cents (4.4 cents) per donated dollar goes to the cause.

[Remember this at Halloween time also!]

The Salvation Army’s Commissioner Todd Bassett receives a salary of only $13,000 per year (plus housing) for managing this $2 billion dollar organization.

96 percent of donated dollars go to the cause.

The American Legion National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary. Your donations go to help Veterans and their families and youth!

The Veterans of Foreign Wars National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary. Your donations go to help Veterans and their families and youth!
The Disabled American Veterans National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary. Your donations go to help Veterans and their families and youth!

The Military Order of Purple Hearts National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary. Your donations go to help Veterans and their families and youth!

The Vietnam Veterans Association National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary. Your donations go to help Veterans and their families and youth!

No further comment is necessary.

JULIA GORIN: SYRIAN OPPOSITION LEARNS TERROR TACTICS FROM KOSOVO ALBANIANS

http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2847
US-Backed Syrian Rebels Now Trained by Kosovo’s and America’s KLA Terrorists

I had recently called attention to the fact that Libyan and Syrian rebels were looking to the “former” rebels constituting today’s KLA government of Kosovo for guidance on post-war Christian-less peace. I wrote that, when a delegation from Tripoli visited Pristina last month because “Kosovo’s post-conflict transition process could serve as a useful model for Libya” and because it wanted to “learn about Kosovo’s experience in reintegrating [KLA fighters],” what they really wanted to know was how Albanians managed to get terrorists legitimized and weaponized by the West.

The Libyans also wanted to learn from Albanians “what [they] did first after the end of the war… and how…the amnesty and disarmament processes went.” I explained that what the Albanians did first was ethnically cleanse every town and village of its non-Albanian populations and of any Albanian opposition, with NATO’s help. As for disarmament, there was none. Unless you’re talking about disarming the already sitting Serbian ducks. And as for amnesty for the Albanian “fighters,” evidently what was meant by that was wholesale immunity for Christian-killing that continued well beyond the “end” of the war, and to this day. (Type in “Kosovo” and “climate of impunity” and find any number of international reports on the matter including by HRW and Amnesty.)

Then came Syria’s turn:

Syrian opposition studies terror tactics in Kosovo (Russia Today, May 4)

A delegation of Syrian rebels has made a deal with Pristina authorities to exchange experience on partisan warfare. The Syrian opposition is sending militants to Kosovo for adopting tactics and being trained to oust President Bashar Assad’s regime.

FINLAND’S IRANIAN MEGA MOSQUE: SOEREN KERN

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3080/finland-iranian-mega-mosque Although critics of the Helsinki mega-mosque have warned that the building will be used by the Iranian regime to recruit impressionable youths to Hezbollah, Finnish politicians have embraced the Shia mosque as a symbol of multicultural progress. A new mega-mosque has been inaugurated in the Finnish capital, Helsinki. Unlike most mosques in Europe, which […]