Comments on: Follow the money

By: Belmont Club » Who am I speaking to?

Belmont Club » Who am I speaking to? — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:13:42 +0000

[...] made the same point explicitly some posts ago in response to the question of whether we should help the demonstrators as private persons. The key [...]

By: EdGi

EdGi — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:07:49 +0000

“Partners for Peace”, the be-all of deal making, will inevitably lead us to appeasement of evil and then to massive violense in self defense when the evildoers do the evil they will do. Amazingly, Spenglers article is almost a duplicate of the same things said about the German corruption after Hitler came to power and the Shibatsu corruption in pre-Pearl Harbor Japan. The opposition is corrupt, no doubt, but our delusion of “partners” will lead us to the horrors of the past if we do not change the regime. Wretchard, your analogy of the support for Enrile is “write-on”; I suspect the people in the streets are well aware of Spengler’s point of the corrupt power struggle, and are motivated by their hatred of the regime and love of freedom, not naive loyalty to the sleazoids. Sadly, Obi is not with them, but with his “partners”, the evil-doers.

By: Belmont Club » What goes around

Belmont Club » What goes around — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:07:24 +0000

[...] article entitled “Obama, Siding With the Regime” makes the point expressed in the post Follow the Money, but in a more scholarly and better documented way. In that post I wrote that Obama was a man with [...]

By: Derek

Derek — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 06:10:43 +0000

The US has won wars for two reasons; they could afford space and time to win, and they learned quickly by moving the fighting men back to teach the next wave. And they have been able to harness overwhelming force eventually to overcome any mistakes.

Obama has oddly enough gotten to where he is by being able to afford time and space to win. His opponents fell apart before him. Clinton and McCain both lost their contests as opposed to Obama winning.

I wonder if he has the capability to learn from events.

Everything we see happening, the stimulus, the treasury actions, even health care, and foreign policy are almost to a detail old established positions that long time washington insiders have nurtured for years. The reaction to Iran is pure and genuine State Department, the same State Department that has been wrong on almost every issue, with a good dose of CIA ‘intelligence’, who also have been wrong on nearly everything.

I don’t think that Obama has a clue what to do, and those surrounding him haven’t had a fresh idea for two decades.

Iran may self destruct, probably ending up not with some strongman, but societal collapse, a festering sore that will cultivate pathologies that will extend far beyond it’s borders. We’ve seen this before, and it didn’t turn out well. I’m predicting that the US will do the wrong, obtuse, destructive, infuriating thing in every turn in this event. Washington has become so parochial, so detached from reality. They couldn’t make a good decision if someone nailed it to their forehead.

I pity those poor sods in Iran. They will fight, they will be shot at, beaten. They will cry out worthy words, pleas for decency and uprightness.

Derek

By: blert

blert — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:44:49 +0000

It’s stage craft over statecraft every time with the 0.

H’s brought hollywood to the white house.

By: oMan

oMan — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:38:10 +0000

Karen Yvonne (#28): made me laugh. So true, Obama doesn’t care about fundamentals, only about the theater. With, always, Himself at center stage. Meanwhile the poor kids and average voters in Iran are going to get so hurt. If they are smart they will not count on anything he says.

By: The Ethereal Voice

The Ethereal Voice — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:08:33 +0000

[...] What’s the game? [...]

By: Karen Yvonne

Karen Yvonne — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:07:11 +0000

Is Obama embarrassed that he made such a big deal about unconditional talks with the now obviously not-so-popular Ahmadinejad? I don’t think so, not at all. He doesn’t care who’s in charge as long as he get to talk to whoever it is. Some might be embarrassed on Obama’s behalf, but Obama himself isn’t. As far as he’s concerned, there’s no reason why it should redound to his discredit.

By: Roderick Reilly

Roderick Reilly — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:36:49 +0000

Two observations:

On the light side: Conan O’Brian on the “Tonight” show probably came closer than the entire MSM when he ran a clip of the Iranian Presidential debate with his own subtitles, where he had Amahdinejahd and Mousavi each claiming that they were the more evil of the two.

Now, I’m going to go out on a limb and be devil’s advocate: could the Obama administration’s tardy and limpid reaction to the post-election events be due to them actually knowing what a sham this whole election process in Iran was? Why fulminate against the winner if the loser himself was a fraud?

Just asking.

By: Karen Yvonne

Karen Yvonne — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:31:17 +0000

In my post @11 I didn’t mean to come off sounding totally heartless. I feel sorry for those Iranians who would be free from, as blogstop put it, the “ossified theocracy.” And yes, in general, support for the democratic process is important even if for the moment it’s more symbolic than substantive. It’s just that it’s hard to believe democracy is necessarily a good thing in a majority Islamic country. After all, as Herb @21 noted, they still chop off heads and hands – does it matter if the sword they use is a democratic one? Democratic or not, the sword will always be a prominent feature.