Israel and the "land for peace" fiction

Caroline Glick :: The land-for-peace hoax:

Indeed the land-for-peace formula will be exposed as a twofold fiction. First, it is based on the false proposition that the peace process is a two-way street. Israel gives land, the Arabs give peace. But the inevitable death of the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord under an Egyptian jihadist regime makes clear that the land-for-peace formula is a one-way street. Israeli land giveaways are permanent. Arab commitments to peace can be revoked at any time.

The conflict is not about land. 

The plain fact is that Hamas, Fatah/Palestinian Authority and Hezbollah are united in one goal: the elimination of Israel as an independent, Jewish state. This has also been Syria's goal since modern Israel was founded in 1948. Syria is an Iranian client and I am sure no pixels need be expended to explain Iran's hostility to the Jewish nation. Israel's enemies want to destroy the country as a political entity. Hamas has said bluntly, over and again, that all Jews must be expelled or killed.

The conflict is over Israel's very existence, not its "borders."

Read the rest.

Christians run for their lives in Middle East

Persecution of Christians in Muslim lands in the Middle East is rising, especially in Egypt, Middle East Forum reports.

A recent report indicates that unprecedented numbers of Copts, Egypt's indigenous Christian population, are emigrating from their homeland in response to the so-called "Arab spring":

The Egyptian Union of Human Rights Organizations (EUHRO) published a report today on emigration of Christians from Egypt, saying that nearly 100,000 Christians have emigrated since March 2011. The report, which was sent to the Egyptian cabinet and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), warned that this emigration has been prompted by the escalating intimidation and attacks on Christians by Islamists. "Copts are not emigrating abroad voluntarily," said Naguib Gabriell, the director EUHRO, "they are coerced into that by threats and intimidation by hard line Salafists, and the lack of protection they are getting from the Egyptian regime."

The report goes on to list a number of attacks on Copts and churches—including the killing of Coptic youth in Moqattam, the Imbaba and other church attacks—adding "Salafist clerics, who gained political influence after the January 25 Revolution, have become emboldened, calling Copts Dhimmis who have to pay the jizya (tax paid by non-Muslims to the state) because they are not first class citizens and can never enjoy full citizenship rights, or obtain sensitive posts."

Indeed, this boldness is a harbinger of things to come—and Copts know it, hence the emigration. Wagdi Ghoneim, a popular cleric and former imam in California, recently called Copts "Crusaders" on Al Jazeera—about the worst thing to call someone in the Muslim world—insisting that they do not deserve equal rights with Muslims in Egypt, because they are infidel dhimmis. Likewise, Abu Shadi, a top representative of the Salafis, told Tahrir News that the Copts must either convert to Islam, pay jizya and assume inferior status, or die. These are just a couple of examples of the countless Muslim leaders openly hostile to Egypt's native population.

Meanwhile, "Mosques Flourish in America; Churches Perish in Muslim World."

So how's that Arab Spring thing working out? Not too good.

Gee, ya think?

Headline:

Dismissed Syrian general found dead under suspicious circumstances


General Ali Habib was Syria's defense minister - until yesterday. Assad fired him for opposing the increasing brutality of the regime's crackdowns against demonstrators.

Habib was found this morning dead from gunshot wounds from "an automatic weapon."

Nothing to see here, move along.

Israel and "land for peace"

President Obama says that the basis for peace between Israel and the Palestinians should be the (so-called) pre-1967 borders "with land swaps." Set aside the now the fact that there is no such thing as "pre-1967 borders" because even if there were, reverting to the pre-'67 lines would not mean peace for Israel.

The conflict is not about land. 

The plain fact is that Hamas, Fatah/Palestinian Authority and Hezbollah are united in one goal: the elimination of Israel as an independent, Jewish state. This has also been Syria's goal since modern Israel was founded in 1948. Syria is an Iranian client and I am sure no pixels need be expended to explain Iran's hostility to the Jewish nation. Israel's enemies want to destroy the country as a political entity. Hamas has said bluntly, over and again, that all Jews must be expelled or killed.

The conflict is not about land. The conflict is over Israel's very existence, not its "borders." In 2000, Israeli PM Ehud Barak and staff met with Yassir Arafat and staff at Camp David. The conference was sponsored by President Clinton. Using the pre-67 lines as a basis, Barak proposed a modification of the lines based on defensibility, but offered a hectare-for-hectare swap to the PA for each modification. Barak also offered to dismantle dozens of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Israel also offered the PA control over two of Jerusalem's four historic quarters, but Arafat demanded actual sovereignty over East Jerusalem and all its holy sites, including the Western Wall, the holiest site of Judaism. There were other issues, too, mainly the "right of return," but basically Barak offered Arafat about 95 percent of what Arafat had been demanding all along.

Arafat's response was simply to leave and return to the West Bank without making a counter-proposal of any kind. Subsequently, President Clinton and his chief Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross, both wrote that Arafat was solely responsible for the conference's failure. Ross said that Arafat's staff told him that Arafat was shocked by Barak's offer because it was so generous and that Arafat said before he flew away that if he accepted Barak's offers, he (Arafat) would be murdered by other Palestinians within a week.

Why? Because Fatah/PA and Hamas have never sought and do not want a "Palestinian state" with Israel as a Jewish state alongside. They are driven instead by their desire to incorporate all Israel under Arab rule and sovereignty. Fatah would grant the Jews who remained severely restricted religious and political rights. Hamas says that all Jews who do not leave must be killed.

This issue is not over what happened in 1967. It is over what happened in 1948 - the creation of the modern state of Israel.

The situation on the ground

Hamas controls Gaza. Fatah/PA controls the West Bank. Hezbollah controls Lebanon. Hamas and Hezbollah are longtime allies. Hamas was a sub-faction of Palestinian terrorism until 2005, when Israel completely pulled out of Gaza. Hamas took over Gaza in 2006 by force, killing PA officials and Fatah fighters who tried to oppose them. Only now have Hamas and Fatah/PA become realigned with one another. But make no mistake. The end of Israel has always been their goal. That is explicitly the reason Hamas was founded. Hamas is not a nationalist organization. It is a terrorist one. It does not seek to build but only to destroy. Its very charter states plainly:

"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. "

"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

Fatah's goal is no different. True, in 1988 Yassir Arafat, Fatah's supreme commander in the 1950s and 1960s, declared in English before Western cameras that he explicitly recognized Israel's right to exist. This apparent breakthrough ultimately led to the Oslo Accords in 1993, which in turn made possible the founding the the PA as a proto-state for Palestinians, of which Arafat served as first president.

However, what Arafat did not say to Western media or audiences in English is what he made abundantly clear to his domestic audiences in Arabic: that the right of Israel to exist, that Arafat claimed to recognize, was not its right to exist as a Jewish state separate from an Arab nation of Palestine. In fact, Palestinian curricula for kindergartens on up graphically made clear that "Palestine" consists of all of Israel, the West bank and Gaza - that is to say, the very same geography that Hamas claims.

Fatah's reputation as moderates is unjustified. While Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at southern Israel in the last several years, it was from the West Bank, always under Fatah's rule, that the vast majority of suicide bombers entered Israel. These bombers killed multiples more Israelis than Hamas's rockets.

The conflict is not about land. It is about Israel itself. To close, here is a video of

Hamas MP and Cleric Yunis Al-Astal the Jews were brought to Palestine for the “great massacre” in preparation for the United States of Islam caliphate for which Palestine will be the capital.

Steamrolling the "Arab Spring"

An Ill Season - Andrew C. McCarthy - National Review Online

Screaming “With our blood and soul, we will defend you, Islam,” jihadists stormed the Virgin Mary Church in northwest Cairo last weekend. They torched the Coptic Christian house of worship, burned the nearby homes of two Copt families to the ground, attacked a residential complex, killed a dozen people, and wounded more than 200: just another day in this spontaneous democratic uprising by Muslim hearts yearning for freedom.

In the delusional vocabulary of the “Arab Spring,” this particular episode is known as a sectarian “clash.” That was the Washington Post’s take. Its headline reads “12 dead in Egypt as Christians and Muslims clash” — in the same way, one supposes, that a mugger’s fist can be said to “clash” with his victim’s face.

Saudis cut oil output

Saudis Slash Oil Output, Say Market Oversupplied:

Saudi Arabia's oil minister said on Sunday the kingdom had slashed output by 800,000 barrels per day in March due to oversupply, sending the strongest signal yet that OPEC will not act to quell soaring prices.

Consumers have urged the exporters' group to pump more crude to put a cap on oil, which surged to more than $127 a barrel this month, its highest level in 2 1/2 years amid unrest in North Africa and the Middle East.

Oil Ministers from Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates echoed Saudi Arabia's Ali al-Naimi's concerns about oversupply and said rocketing crude prices were out of the hands of OPEC, which next meets in June.

"The market is overbalanced ... Our production in February was 9.125 million barrels per day (bpd), in March it was 8.292 million bpd. In April we don't know yet, probably a little higher than March. The reason I gave you these numbers is to show you that the market is oversupplied," Naimi told reporters.

This is probably true. Surely no one in the world better analyzes the world oil market better than the Saudis. Oil prices have skyrocketed in the past several months. Most of us probably attribute the rise to unrest in the Middle East, but that is the minority cause. But early this month I covered that:

... the unrest does not account for nearly as much of the price increase as you might think. After all, supplies from the Middle East have remained almost entirely uninterrupted. Egypt's hardly burbled and Libya's disruption accounted for such a tiny proportion of world supply that its effect was marginal. IMO, the oil futures market, which is an aggregated risk assessor, has already discounted the possibility of future unrest regarding supply.

No, it seems the real reason oil prices have risen so much is because we, the American people, gave hundreds of billions of dollars to banks that then turned around and put our billions into investments in oil and other commodities funds rather than making loans to businesses. It all started with Ben Bernanke (no surprise)... .

The price of oil and of oil funds tanked today. US Oil (USO) dropped from Friday's close of 43.71 to a low today of 42.55 to close at 42.88, a one-day loss of 1.90 percent. Proshares Ultra DJ-UBS Crude Oil (UCO), plunged 3.70 percent from Friday's close of 59.66 to close today at 57.45 after reaching the day's low of 56.54.

USO, April 18:

UCO, April 18

One day does not a market make, but oil funds generally ended the day on the uptick.

My guess as to why oil dropped is that the market reacted to the Saudi announcement, but mainly because of this: U.S. credit rating outlook lowered by S&P.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Standard & Poor's lowered its outlook for the nation's long-term debt Monday, saying the political grousing over the deficit could put more pressure on the still shaky economic recovery.

"The outlook reflects our view of the increased risk that the political negotiations over when and how to address both the medium- and long-term fiscal challenges will persist until at least after national elections in 2012," said S&P credit analyst Nikola Swann.

S&P maintained its top-tier 'AAA/A-1+' credit rating on U.S. sovereign debt, saying the nation's "highly diversified" economy and "effective monetary policies" have helped support growth. But the ratings agency lowered its outlook for America's long-term credit rating to "negative" from "stable."

Since oil is (for now) traded in US dollars, the S&P move blasted uncertainty into the market right at the time that the Saudis said they were cutting back. And if there is anything that futures markets hate, it's uncertainty. The initial impulse of investors is to sell, which as trhe graphs show, they did early. But then some sanity returned and prices crept back upward.

This is not to say that prices will rise again tomorrow. It's the long-term trend that matters most unless you're deliberately a short-term trader (and how do you like them ulcers, eh?). For people with oil funds (not commodity options) in their IRAs, for example, a price drop might be a good buy opportunity since the price outlook for crude oil remains rising over the longer term.

Yes, oil, will continue to rise in price - unless it doesn't: "Potential Black Swan: $10 Oil."

Mike Maloney of Gold and Silver Inc. ... said oil would go down to perhaps as low as $10 per barrel (which closely resembles our contention that deflation will cause prices of assets, commodities etc. to fall by 80-90%).

But back to the broader markets. Today, after tanking 250 points following S&P's announcement, the Dow recovered to close at -141 from Friday. So apparently the market does not believe that S&P is correct (they didn't shine in their evaluations of Japan, for example).

So what will the morrow bring? Sorry, my crystal ball is completely cloudy.

Okay, here's what I think: Gold and silver will fall some (they shot up like a rocket today as investors fled the dollar and oil) and oil and the overall market will rise, but not by a lot.

$5 per gallon gas, coming to a pump near you

CBS Chicago: "Gas Prices Climbing Toward $5 Per Gallon"

Some experts say $5 per gallon gas is possible by Memorial Day-or sometime in summer. Others caution that reaching that mark is unlikely over the next six weeks. In Chicago, the prices keep rising to near-record levels–with no relief in sight.

As the photo shows, gasoline is already well above $4 per gallon in Chicago. The question is, is there a top?

Eventually, high oil prices from the international spot market will slow oil-consuming countries' economies enough that the demand will decrease and oil prices will drop in response. At least, that's been the pattern in previous cycles.

A potential offset, though, is that the output of Saudi Arabia, the world's largest single producer, is declining for two reasons. One, some of the fields are reaching the end of their supply life and fewer barrels are being pumped from them. Two, the kingdom's own domestic needs are rising because of a rapidly rising population, meaning that Saudi Arabia is exporting a decreasing proportion of its production. Hence, “Saudi net exports of crude oil have entered terminal decline."

So we are in uncharted territory regarding supply and demand.

The Oil Price Bubble - When Will It Pop?

Why have petroleum prices soared so high so fast? Presently we are seeing the highest spot price for crude oil ever in the month of March. Is it because there is a decreasing supply of oil coming onto the world market?

2010's figures are not yet compiled for worldwide production, but this table tells the tale. Oil production has held steady since 2004 except for a small surge in 2008 (when prices topped $150 per barrel, so you can bet anyone with a derrick was pumping). But even 2008's production was significantly less than 1 million bpd more than 2007's. When oil prices fell in 2009, so did production, but only back to about the same level as before.

Of course, production is only half the equation of whether there is a shortage. The other half is demand. Just as oil production fell in 2009, so did consumption, though not quite as much. But production and consumption are very closely correlated with supply keeping up with demand. There are, after all, no long lines at gas stations. In fact, as gasoline prices have risen, there are pretty much no lines at all at gas stations.

Are oil prices rocketing skyward because of unrest in the Middle East - Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, even some in Saudi Arabia? Partly, but the unrest does not account for nearly as much of the price increase as you might think. After all, supplies from the Middle East have remained almost entirely uninterrupted. Egypt's hardly burbled and Libya's disruption accounted for such a tiny proportion of world supply that its effect was marginal. IMO, the oil futures market, which is an aggregated risk assessor, has already discounted the possibility of future unrest regarding supply.

No, it seems the real reason oil prices have risen so much is because we, the American people, gave hundreds of billions of dollars to banks that then turned around and put our billions into investments in oil and other commodities funds rather than making loans to businesses. It all started with Ben Bernanke (no surprise):

This run-up in oil prices started with Fed Chairman Bernanke`s Jackson Hole speech where the big banks realized they were going to get a bunch more juice in the form of POMO operations by the Federal Reserve to play around in markets with.

And what did the large financial institutions do with this newly created juice? Instead of allocating the almost zero percent money they are all borrowing to productive activities such as lending loans to small businesses which will create jobs and stimulate the economy, the big banks have decided that since the fed is electronically printing money and providing extra liquidity/juice for financial markets that this is inflationary and devalues the dollar.

All Fed Juice Leads to Commodities

And just to make things worse, the big banks have decided to take their cheap capital they borrow at basically zero percent , and invest into commodities, i.e., agricultural futures like Wheat, Corn, and Soybeans, energy futures like Oil (NYSE:USO) and Gasoline (Fig. 2), and industrial and precious metals like Copper (NASDAQ:CU), Gold (NYSE:GLD) and Silver (NYSE:SLV).

Hence, inflationary pressure on those commodities resulted, which explains why food prices have risen along with oil prices. The rise in oil/commodity prices is being driven by investors and speculators (maybe not much of a diff).

What we have here is a 2008 redux. The Brent contract on the ICE exchange is being used to engineer prices up, as it is an unregulated exchange with no real transparency on position limits by the Big Banks. The Big Banks are also piling a bunch of money into commodity related ETF`s and mutual funds, which in turn have to buy exposure to the futures market in all these commodities. Add in the hedge funds, pension funds, money managers, and retail traders, and voila! you have these bubbles created which have no relation to the underlying fundamentals.

This situation is very much like the loose money policy of the Fed under Alan Greenspan regarding mortgage leveraging, and we know how that turned out.

Speculative bubbles always pop. The problem is that no one knows what the trigger will be or when it will come. But watch for signals from the Fed that its monetary policy might get tightened up some. The bubble might not pop, but it won't get bigger, either.

Muslim Brotherhood behind Syrian unrest?

Syrian security forces, many of whom are actually Iranian, have been shooting demonstrators in the streets of cities there. Now Assad's regime claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is behind all the unrest.

Syrian presidential adviser Bouthaina Shaaban blamed a renowned Sunni Muslim cleric for the unrest in Latakia, saying Qatar-based Sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi had incited Latakia's Sunnis to revolt with his sermon in Doha on Friday. Al-Qaradawi, who has millions of followers around the world and is seen as one of most influential voices in Sunni Islam; told his audience that, "Today the train of revolutions arrived at a station that was inevitable it would reach: the station of Syria."

"Syria is like the others — and it is more deserving than others of these revolutions," he said. "When there are those who are killed, know that the revolution has been victorious!"

Shabaan said those words were responsible for the unrest in Latakia.

"There was nothing (in Lattakia) before Qaradawi's sermon on Friday," she told reporters in Damascus. "Qaradawi's words were a clear and honest invitation for sectarian strife."

Egyptian al-Qaradawi is one of the top intellectuals of Islam whose theology is a guiding light of the original Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood. He has an immense audience in the Arab world for his al-Jazeera regular broadcasts. Significantly, Qaradawi is Sunni Muslim while Syrian dictator Bashar Assad is Alawite Muslim, a small, mystical sect that is an offshoot of Shia Islam. If there is anything that Sunnis generally and the Brotherhood specifically despise, it's Shiites. So no wonder Qaradawi preached against Assad.

This is not to say that the demonstrators in Syria are all Brotherhood members or newrecruits to the Brotherhood. It is to say that the demonstrations there have a renewed religious, Islamist nature that is not captured by the usual Western drivel of describing them almost exclusively in political terms.

Libya: The media-driven war

Now that widespread resistance has broken out in Syria, having festered on a small scale for a handful of weeks, will President Obama and Europe turn their attention toward protecting the lives of Syrian civilians who are being killed as they demonstrate against Bashar al-Assad's dictatorial rule?

Military troops opened fire during protests in the southern part of Syria on Friday and killed peaceful demonstrators, according to witnesses and news reports, hurtling the strategically important nation along the same trajectory that has altered the landscape of power across the Arab world. ...

Human rights groups said that since protests began seven days ago in the south, 38 people had been killed by government forces — and it appeared that many more were killed on Friday. Precise details were hard to obtain because the government sealed off the area to reporters and would not let foreign news media into the country. ...

Human rights groups said that since protests began seven days ago in the south, 38 people had been killed by government forces — and it appeared that many more were killed on Friday. Precise details were hard to obtain because the government sealed off the area to reporters and would not let foreign news media into the country.

Note that last sentence: the government "would not let foreign news media into the country." This is the key point to understanding the fury the West has unleashed against Libya compared to the yawn we are not even stifling concerning Syria.

The campaign in Libya was almost entirely media driven from the outset.

I do not mean by that the the media actually promoted the war against Qaddafi or that media outlets or reporters encouraged Western intervention. I mean that Qaddafi's major strategic blunder was allowing foreign media to cover the resistance from its beginning practically without hindrance, even including broadcasting from Tripoli literally while the initial Allied cruise missiles were landing.

The images and video coming from Libya, especially during the early days of the street demonstrations showing protesters being gunned down, were the sine qua non of Western intervention. Not all the images and video came through the media, of course, as much of it was sent out by the resistance itself, having been captured on smart phones and personal cameras. But the European and American commercial media used those images extensively and that coverage was key to the growing dismay and revulsion in Europe and the US.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton implicitly admitted that the media played a key role in energizing military intervention.

"I know that the nightly news cannot cover a humanitarian crisis that thankfully did not happen, but it is important to remember that many, many Libyans are safer today because the international community took action," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday.

Assad, on the other hand, is not the fool that Qaddafi proved to be. Assad's father, Hafez, slaughtered 20,000 people in in 1982 in the city of Hama for resisting his rule. Absolutely no foreign coverage was done because no reporters were there - and for sure Assad didn't send out a press release afterward. Bashar has obviously learned this lesson well.The corpses will mount in Syria quite out sight from the never-blinking eye of the international media. And the Western governments will therefore be able to to pretend they don't know.

Photo source, DailyMail.co.uk

Allies confused? So are we.

Foreign Policy: "European governments “completely puzzled” about U.S. position on Libya"

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's meetings in Paris with the G8 foreign ministers on Monday left her European interlocutors with more questions than answers about the Obama administration's stance on intervention in Libya. ...

Clinton's unwillingness to commit the United States to a specific position led many in the room to wonder exactly where the administration stood on the situation in Libya.

"Frankly we are just completely puzzled," the diplomat said. "We are wondering if this is a priority for the United States."

Clinton took no position on anything, "repeating the administration's position that all options are on the table but not specifically endorsing any particular step."

I say that if the Euros are confused, they can take a number and wait in line. Besides, as the WSJ's Kimberley Strassel explains, the lack of clarity by Obama on Libya is only what we have come to expect.

If you'd like to know where the leader of the free world stands on those NCAA rankings, just turn on ESPN. ("I think Kansas has more firepower," he explained as he filled out his bracket.) Wondering what the commander in chief thinks about gun laws? Don't worry—he's in favor of those already on the books, according to a recent op-ed.

If, however, you are curious about where the most powerful man in the universe stands on Libya, radiation, a possible government shutdown, the future of Social Security, or rising oil prices, don't look to the White House. Those issues are tough. Those issues risk mistakes.

I wrote in October 2009 that we are saddled with a Mae West presidency coupled with the return of the Peter Principle.

"The Peter Principle is the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise which also introduced the "salutary science of Hierarchiology", "inadvertently founded" by Peter. ...

The Peter Principle is a special case of a ubiquitous observation: anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails.

I don't see how anyone examining President Obama's overall record can argue against the proposition that he occupies an office far above his level of incompetency.

At one's level of incompetence, the manager or leader occupies his time with tasks below the level necessary for the office and hopes that staffs can pull success's rabbit out of the hat. (This helps explains why Obama has so many czars.) Couple that with Obama's inherent inability to measure success by any standard other than getting personal attention from as broad a swath as possible, and you see that the Oval office is occupied by a weak, ineffectual leader unable to perform at the level required. ...

After John F. Kennedy was elected, President Dwight D. Eisenhower spent many hours with him. One of the key lessons was this: "All the decisions you will make," said Eisenhower, "will be hard decisions." Dwight went on to explain that the easy things will be tended to by cabinet secretaries and others of the administration with executive authority. But the tough ones will always be kicked to higher levels to be decided. At every level, the decisions become more and more difficult until, at last, the presidential inbox is filled with nothing but the most difficult items.

There is nothing at all in Obama's pre-presidential resume that shows he ever made highly difficult decisions that depended, at the end, on his own personal reservoir of wisdom and experience. So he does not tackle the inbox because its contents are above his competence. (One is reminded of Obama telling Rick Warren that when an unborn child gets human rights is "above my pay grade.") He tends instead to lesser matters that match his lower level of competence, such as filling out basketball brackets and flying down to Rio on a five-day trip of little importance, but which conveniently corresponds to his daughters' spring break. So tourism time will be a heavy feature of the agenda. But will anything presidential be accomplished?

President Obama's visit to Brazil this weekend, and his speech on Brazil-U.S. economic relations, will be closely watched for hints on the administration's trade agenda. The President has called for increasing exports, yet held back from pushing for action on pending Free Trade Agreements with Colombia and Panama. For its part, Congress has linked action on the Korean FTA to the Colombia and Panama pacts. While this impasse continues, we are losing great opportunities to grow exports -- and create jobs.

The President needs to provide resolute leadership on trade, and Brazil is a great place to start.

But that's not why he's gone down there.

So Euro leaders are confused about the president's position on Libya? Why would they be any different than the rest of us, on this or any other issue?

Related: "Rex Murphy: When crisis strikes the world, Obama falls silent"

There’s a great vacancy at the top of the world: A retreat by the American government from its global leadership role. ...

It is ironic that this high celebrity of a president seems more comfortable with acting the celebrity role than being the president. There’s a vacancy at the top of the world. And his name is Obama.

As I said, we are saddled with a Mae West presidency - "It's better to be looked over than overlooked."

Libya: You say you got a resolution ...

... well, you know, we'd all love to see the plan.

A rebel fighter shot down near Benghazi

French fighter jets are already flying over Libya.

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- French fighter jets soared over Libya on Saturday to counter Moammar Gadhafi's military forces who were intent on destroying the opposition as they pushed into the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

"Our air force will oppose any aggression by Colonel Gadhafi against the population of Benghazi," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking after an international, top-level meeting in Paris over the Libyan crisis.

"As of now, our aircraft are preventing planes from attacking the town," he said. "As of now, our aircraft are prepared to intervene against tanks."

I am perfectly content to let France and the other Euros take the lead here. I'd be more than happy if the US role never included actual, direct military action and was limited to logistic, intelligence and transportation support. It's the Euros who've been propping Qaddafi up all these many years, France in particular. So they can have it.

A FoxNews crew near Benghazi took this video of a rebel jet shot down by mistake by rebel ground fire:



Meanwhile, back in Washington,

After two weeks of playing down the prospect of military intervention in Libya, the Obama administration is on the brink of inserting itself into a third war in a Muslim nation — something the president, who has spent the first half of his term mending America’s relationship with Islam, had hoped to avoid.

The administration’s shift from skepticism to support for military intervention in Libya occurred over a frenetic week of war and diplomacy in Washington and Paris, at the United Nations and inside Libya, where facts on the ground changed swiftly.

However, we have not been told from the administration whether the president's "support for military intervention" includes direct action by US forces.

Having already addressed the fact that any direct-combat employment of US forces against Qaddafi woiuld be illegal absent Congressional authorization, I will here stipulate that the president will go forward with military intervention, approved by Congress or not. And my question for today is simply this: What's the plan?

I don't mean the military operations plan. I mean a comprehensive statement of national strategic objectives and rationale for the intervention, presented to the American people, that explains just what we are trying to do and why.

I frankly don't think that anyone in the administration, from the president on down, has the slightest idea what that could be in any more detail than, "Stop Qaddafi from killing the revolutionaries." But that's not a plan. It's not even a decent objective.

ABC News reported yesterday that in 2007 (while opposing President Bush's "surge" in Iraq), then-Senator Obama said,

"The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

Before a single US plane flies over Libya, the president must explain to the American people the following at a minimum:

1. What is Qaddafi's "actual or imminent threat" to America that justifies combat deployment of US forces on presidential order alone?

2. Absent such threat, what is his legal authority to send US forces into combat without prior Congressional approval? (Congressional approval, or not, may yet be forthcoming.)

3. What is the primary strategic objective that the United States will achieve through military forces that cannot be obtained otherwise?

4. What is the moral imperative that justifies killing and being killed?

5. Apart from opposing Qaddafi, what exactly makes the Libyan revolutionaries worth the expenditure of American lives and treasure?

6. The president is on record as saying that Qaddafi must not remain in power. Does that mean that regime change is a US objective and if so, will US military power be used to achieve it?

7. If not, will a partition of Libya into territories controlled by Qaddafi and the revolutionaries be acceptable, and if so, why?

8. What influence do you expect to have over the political nature of a potential revolutionary government?

9. What are the conditions of success in Libya? What must happen before American combat forces are withdrawn? In other words, how will you know when you've won?

About the moral imperative for war. If no one in the administration can explain what America is trying to do within the context of Just War Theory, which demands specifically to delineate the just cause of war, the just conduct of war and the just ending of war, then there is no justification at all.

If there is a moral imperative to intervene in Libya, presumably to stop Qaddafi's attacks against Libyan civilians, then inquiring minds want to know why this imperatives rules for Libya here when President Obama specifically rejected the very same imperative in warring against Iraq in 2003.

My position hasn't changed. To paraphrase what Bismarck said about the Balkans in 1888, "The whole of Libya is not worth the bones of a single American pilot." It is a war that only a liberal could love, one bereft of actual US national strategic interests.

Update: An obscure report that so far, the president will not send US forces into direct combat except for launching cruise missiles from offshore vessels: "... the US contribution will be logistics and support, including refueling and intelligence, but not represent the pointed end of the spear."

If this is so and remains so, then the president should be commended. But this administration's public communications are the worst in decades, and we the people deserve to know whether this report is true. Why are we still waiting?

Update: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, answering questions in Paris:

Is the goal to protect civilians or to remove Qaddafi from power? Clinton adamantly says it is to protect civilians.

Could Qadadfi remain in power? "Those are all questions that standing here are difficult to answer."

She did rule out use of American ground troops.

Marc Lynch at Foreign Policy - the makings of a quagmire.

Related:

Libya intervention will justify Iraq war

Cameron: shut down Libya's air force

The Illegal Libya War

The Illegal Libya War

The UN Security Council cannot authorize the use of the American military - only the Congress can

So the UNSC has authorized member states to use military forces to enforce the terms of UNSC Resolution 1973 (text here).

By any reasonable historical standard, in theory and in practice, any nation that carries out military actions in accordance with UNSCR 1973 is waging war upon Libya, or minimally against the Qaddafi-led part of Libya.

In addition to imposing the long-discussed "no fly zone," the resolution authorizes member states "to take all necessary measures ... to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack." This is so open ended that it means that any military action against Qaddafi is authorized, including landing the entire 2nd Marine Division on the shores of Tripoli.

Despite the way the commentati (and I, above) say that resolution "authorizes" the use of military forces against Qaddafi, in fact the UNSC has "authorized" nothing at all. The United Nations has no authority to authorize any kind of use of United States forces. As a matter of legality, this resolution is worth less than the paper it is printed on. At best, it offers political cover only. But the UNSCR has no legal authority regarding employment of US forces.

What I want to know is this: Where is the United States Congress on waging war against Libya?

Only the Congress has the authority to declare war by the United States against Libya. And don't try the old dodge that use of US forces against Qaddafi is somehow not a war. It won't be a "police action," as Truman characterized his illegal war in Korea (36,500 US dead). Even LBJ had the weak cover the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, but the Congress failed to carry out its Constitutional responsibilities in the ensuing years, so 58,151 Americans lost their lives in the Vietnam War.

I am not ignoring that US presidents have ordered many military expeditions with no prior Congressional authorization - in some cases not even Congressional knowledge. President G.H.W Bush ordered a sizable force into Panama in 1989 (lived history for me) with no express Congressional authorization, but the proximate cause was the killing of an American officer by Panamanian troops plus other acts of violence against Americans, including American civilians. And the action lasted only about four days.

This same President Bush did gain explicit Congressional authorization for war against Iraq before ordering the military to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991. In 2001, President G.W. Bush gained Congressional authorization for attacking both Afghanistan that year and invading Iraq in 2003. Some of Bush's opponents claimed that the Congress has never actually "declared war" against Iraq, even bringing suit in federal court. The court rejected the suit altogether, holding that the Constitution doesn't specify how the Congress must declare war and that if the Congress authorizes the use of military force, the Constitution's requirement has been met. As then-Senator Joe Biden said at the time, the Congress has declared war whenever the Congress thinks it has. And he added that clearly it had declared war against Iraq even though the Congressional resolution did not use those words (see here).

Belatedly, some Congressional leaders are awakening to the fact the President Obama seems to think the UNSC has given him all the authorization he needs to start bombing Libya. And the Weekly Standard asks, "Does Obama Think His Oath Is to the United Nations?"

After weeks of failing to provide even strong rhetorical support for the uprising in Libya — an uprising in pursuit of liberty and against a United States adversary — President Obama has now apparently decided that he has sufficient international authorization to act. This begs two questions: Where is Congress on Libya? And does President Obama think he took an oath to the United States Constitution, or to the United Nations Charter?

Obama said today that the United States has moved “swiftly” on Libya (one would hate to see “not swiftly”) and that the United Nations Security Council has now authorized military action. Obama seems to view such U.N. authorization as both necessary and sufficient. In truth, however, it is neither.

In 2007, then-Senator Obama said,

"The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

Two questions:

1. Will President Obama live up to his own words?

2. Will Congress do its duty and authorize (or not) the use of force against Qaddafi, or will it defer once again to an increasingly imperial executive (a trend that far predates Obama's inauguration)?

I predict no on the former and same-old, same-old on the latter.

How high for oil?

Maybe higher than ever.

Libya intervention will justify Iraq war

Who says that? Professor Norm Geras of the University of Manchester, a self-described old-school Marxist, "Stopping and punishing crimes against humanity." It's a short post, so here it is:

Some editorialists are now mooting the prosecution of Colonel Gaddafi for crimes against humanity. There is also a piece in the Independent by Geoffrey Robertson setting out the grounds on which Gaddafi could be indicted by the International Criminal Court, following a Security Council direction of the case to that body. Two particular aspects of what Robertson says are of special interest to me.

First, regarding the possibility of a charge for crimes against humanity, he writes:

He [Gaddafi] can... be fixed with command responsibility for the crimes against humanity committed by his troops over the past few days as they have shot and killed innocent civilians in a number of towns and cities.

Under Article 7 of the ICC statute, a widespread lethal attack directed against a civilian population amounts to a crime against humanity and the wilful killing of civilians in a civil war amounts additionally to a war crime under Article 8.

This confirms the puzzlement I expressed yesterday over the supposedly far-reaching implications of the ruling of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Terrorism - at least where it is a policy of an organization and not a one-off incident - must surely be a crime against humanity since it is directed, like Gaddafi's present actions, against a civilian population.

Second, Robertson says - just like that - that there is now a duty of intervention on the international community, existing under international law, 'whenever it becomes necessary to stop or to punish crimes against humanity'. He sees this as resting on the doctrine of a 'responsibility to protect'. Good for him. His opinion chimes in with that of shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy that one shouldn't let anger about the Iraq war block the possibility of future interventions, in the right circumstances, based on a 'responsibility beyond [our] own borders'. One would have thought this was an elementary logical point, given that most of those angry over Iraq didn't believe the war was legitimate as a form of humanitarian intervention in the first place. It should therefore have left the validity of that concept intact. But it doesn't do any harm to remind people.

No, indeed.

Qaddafi murders hundreds, Obama calls for "restraint"

Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi ordered his air force to bomb protesters. The air force there was "bombing indiscriminately across Tripoli on Monday."

"What we are witnessing today is unimaginable. Warplanes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead," Adel Mohamed Saleh said.

Saleh, who called himself a political activist, said the bombings had initially targeted a funeral procession.

"Our people are dying. It is the policy of scorched earth." he said. "Every 20 minutes they are bombing."

Asked if the attacks were still happening he said: "It is continuing, it is continuing. Anyone who moves, even if they are in their car they will hit you."

However, thankfully, two of the pilots given the mission flew to Malta instead.

Two high-ranking Libyan air force pilots have who fled to Malta in their aircraft are reported to have told officials they escaped rather than carry out orders to bomb civilians. ...

The two Mirage F1 jets touched down in Malta after the pilots said they urgently needed to refuel and sought emergency clearance to land. The Times of Malta reported on its website the pilots had told officials they flew to the island after being ordered to bomb protesters occupying Libya's second-biggest city of Benghazi.

One report said they had also brought with them two other members of the Libyan armed forces. The pilots – both colonels – said that, after taking off from Okba Ben Nafi base, they flew low through Libyan air space to avoid radar detection.

So some of Qaddafi's fellow rats are fleeing his sinking ship. Well, I suppose a late change of heart is better than none, especially when the changed heart decides not to mass murder its fellow subjects.

Since the demonstrations against Qaddafi began, there are hundreds killed in the streets by Libyan security thugs.



Reports today say that Qaddafi has fled the country to - where else: "Dictator may already have fled and be on his way to Venezuela after Libyan air force attacks civilians."

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has fled Libya and may be heading for Venezuela, William Hague said today.

The [British] Foreign Secretary said he had seen 'information' that suggests Gaddafi is on his way to the South American country - as Libya was up in flames amid increasingly bloody battles between protesters and security forces.

If true, Qaddafi has left the country in the on-so-tender hands of his son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who "warns of "rivers of blood" in Libya."

Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi's son warned early Monday that the country faces a bloody civil war if protesters refuse to accept reform offers, in a speech broadcast as gunfire rang out in the capital, saying that his father remained in charge with the army's backing and would "fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet."

But don't worry, Libyans! President Barack Obama, who was so daily vocal about the Cairo demonstrators, is on top of the situation! Uh, right?,

President Obama urged restraint in a written statement Friday on Libya and two other countries, but he hasn't appeared on television to talk about the crisis.

So what does "restraint" mean? "Please, Mr. Qaddafi, don't escalate to killing thousands instead of hundreds?" Or maybe, "Don't kill hundreds, kill only dozens."

So pusillanimous is Obama's statement that Libya's own ambassador to the United States attacked it (same link):

Now here's a situation pretty much without precedent: The Libyan Ambassador to the U.S. just called on the Untied [sic] States to denounce his country's leaders -- and his employers -- more forcefully.

"I want the U.S. to tell the world and to work with the countries who love peace...they have to stop this," Ambassador Ali Ojli said, suggesting that he had resigned his post, in an interview with Al Jazeera English.

"I would never ask us to intervene physically in Libya," he said, but called on the Obama Administration to "take a strong position that what's happening in libya must be stopped now...and to avoid giving the impression to the Arab world that the West "has only a materialist mind -- they don't care about human rights...except when it comes to their own interest."

Mr. Ojli vastly overestimates this administration's capability to understand what is in the United States' interests.

Doug Ross has more.

Update: The WaPo finally wades in. It's a pretty good piece, actually, but shrinks from the whole truth here:

Tribal and religious leaders condemned Gaddafi for the attacks against civilians; some urged all Muslims to rise against him. Influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi told al-Jazeera television that he urged any Libyan soldier who has the opportunity to kill Gaddafi - and issued a religious decree to that effect.

"I am issuing a fatwa now to kill Gaddafi," the cleric said. "To any army soldier, to any man who can pull the trigger and kill this man to do so."

Managed to miss mentioning that al-Qaradawi is the public face of the Muslim Brotherhood and that he was cheered by a million Egyptians Feb. 18 in Cairo's Tahrir Square for promising Islamist rule in Egypt.

Letter Home: We're doing just fine

I got one of those frantic letters from my 92 year old mother: "what's going on in Israel? We only hear about Egypt--nothing about Israel? Are you guys okay? Are you still there? "

Well, we are still here and doing just fine. But, that IS the question to ask right now--what ABOUT Israel? With all of its neighbors being shaken to the core, Israel remains calm. That's what's going in Israel right now. In fact, for the first time in Israel's experience, it is no longer the center of attraction. Suddenly the screed that Israel is the source of all that's wrong in the Middle East is silent. And for good reason. Because it has never been true. Ever.

Let's say it again: ISRAEL HAS NEVER BEEN THE PROBLEM IN THE MIDDLE EAST. That's the point. Bush was right. It's about Democracy not puppet states and extortionist regimes. When Israelis are asked from where did this meme appear, they point directly to the culprits. The Clintons (and I voted for him twice and campaigned for him in 1992) and Carter (I voted for that charlatan, too--I am so ashamed) have done more damage here than all the years the British mucked up the region AND India. When the dust settles, perhaps some real work can be done.

It's not over by any means. The US State Department and intelligence has zero ability to read this area. It is an empirical question if the country does not slip into the Iranian model. There are no strong candidates except the fundamentalists. The Army is THE power and they certainly do not want to go the Turkey root, the other loose cannon in the region. In fact, as I write this, the Egyptian Army just shut down the national assembly, suspended the old "constitution", and annouced a new one with elections in 6 months. The risks of recession and a post Shah disaster in Egypt is simply too great. Egypt has become too western and too secular to permit that sort of fundamentalist nonsense.

The US has propped up all the dictators in the area since before the war. EVERYONE is on notice with the way the US treated Mubarak. Egypt is not alone. Jordan, the Emirates, Saudis, Turkey, Algeria, Yemen, Dubai--they are all just dominoes. Even Syria is rocky. The King of Bahrain is so sacred that he's handing out $2700 bribes to each and every family in his country in order to stave off getting the bum's rush. Good luck, dude.

Where there is no more turmoil than usual is Israel and the West Bank. The most disasterous event here in the last ten days is the IKEA store in Netanya burnt to the ground--a significant omen for the Oslo accords if there ever was one. Here we have the usual static but real peace. Now building is going on (can you imagine the fallout if US domestic policy was to halt housing construction for ANY REASON?), employment is way up.

The best source of peace here, which is an everyday reality, is MONEY! EVERYONE is building now. Commercial goods are flowing into the West Bank and there are only smiles from Jews, Christians, and Muslims at the local shopping mall. When the rain clears, I'll continue my astronomy lessons to the Muslim watchmen at the Kibbutz vineyards (they want to be ready for Ramadan).

It is interesting to note that Abbas and his henchmen just took out Jordanian citizenship! They, too, and read the writing on the Wall (over here that's a literal thing, you know) and want to get out of here while they can. So, they're jumping ship--just exactly where do they think it's safe to run?

The real Snake in the Grass in this mix has been Carter. Jimmy Crack Corn. His policies are complete post Southern Reconstruction. His screed has been nothing but separate and unequal. Whenever he shows up, we all notice that he ONLY supports and talks to those who discriminate against Jews, Catholics, and Christians (and Blacks) and whose strong arm thugs wear masks (black Nike masks instead of white sheets). Sound familiar? It is absolutely scandalous that after two generations of Civil Rights that American Foreign Policy has promoted dictators, bigots, terrorists, murders, and rapists. This is to be surpassed by callously abandoning their clients and puppets when the winds turn.

So, when Condi piped up about Birmingham and racism, I was appalled. I, too, remember the Cracker South. Well, my Mizrachi brethren from the Arab World lived in a racist world that makes the South look good. The parallel construction of the South with the Middle East is the Jews=Blacks. Period. Add the Christians of all stripes to the mix as well. All at the bottom of the heap, all with special badges, all paying special infidel taxes, all subject to brutal pogroms simply because they were Christian, Jewish, or non-Muslim. It was truly pathetic--even more than Jimmy.

So, you ask about Egypt.

About time.

But it ain't over by any means.

Peace will come, however, when the Americans and the Europeans shut up, stand back, and stop enabling the racists and extortionists whether right or left.

IN SUM, the entire fiction of the Middle East has split asunder. The problems here are not due to Israel. That screed has only been the classic means to deflect local anger from where it matters most--the domestic inequalities of extortionist Ancient Regimes and are finally imploding. It is time the US and the Europeans stop fanning those flames. The people who must bear the cost for this distorted view of foreign policy are the poor schnooks who have to bear the burden of the despotic yoke of servitude and extortion.

Ironically, it will be the oil that will bring these states down. In the punitive arrogance, the OPEC states have raised the price of oil too much. Economies around the world are strangling and the costs of shipping are so high that ships are simply being laid up or scrapped. The Oil States depended on that revenue for their larder and livelihood. They built their empires on the assumption that the West is addicted to oil and will pay and pay ever higher prices. Well, that ain't true. Now, their economies are in trouble, too. Their domestic troubles are growing as well and all of it is backed up on their US Lackey covering their security problems.

Ah, but Mubarak--the loyal retainer. Couldn't even wait until he's dead from cancer.

So, the price of oil will be their ultimate undoing. It is the contradiction to their mode of production.

Finally, it does show that Israel's economy and social structure is more stable than its neighbors. It is like Reagan's gambit in the 80's--like the Russians, Israel's enemies simply cannot maintain the economic infrastructure to support a constant war against Israel and continued monetary extortion from their local people. The Gulf States make tons of money but they have the worst infant mortality rates and greatest wealth inequalities in the world. They depend on outside talent for ALL their technological development since they dare not educate their masses. They are dependent on foreign goods and talent. When Bechtel pulls the plug, the Gulf states will be through.

The real question will be in the next several months. The lessons of Revolution, as my Old Man would say, lie in the aftermath, the Thermidor. The Army did not fare well in France nor in Iran. We shall see about Egypt. At this point, nothing is clear anywhere in the region. The best that anyone can do is to wait cautiously. This is not a disco or LA or a football game. There's a lot of mist in the woods right now. It's best to wait and see.

If there is no war this summer, then there won't be for a while simply because the Revolution will have spread to Syria, Jordan, and parts East.

A new dawn indeed.