Category Archives: foreign policy

Democrats and the Benghazi Investigation

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I’ve written elsewhere about the troubling nature of the Democrats’ reluctance to actively investigate the Benghazi failure.

Now, after weeks of publicly professed angst, the Democrats have agreed to appoint members to the House Select Committee whose express purpose is to investigate that mess.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) named her members while insisting that

Democrats’ participation was the only way to assure Americans of a “fair process.”

She also claimed that Democrats must participate in order

to make [the investigation] a “fair process” and to bring “openness and transparency” to the investigation.

Elijah Cummings (D, MD), the Ranking Democrat on the Select Committee, added this:

I believe we need someone in the room to simply defend the truth.

With the Democrats approaching this insisting that Republicans are fundamentally dishonest, though, how will it be possible to trust the Democrats’ objectivity, and their own integrity, as they pretend to carry out their responsibilities on this committee and during this investigation?

Oh, and Congressman Pelosi: you keep using this term “openness and transparency.” I do not think it means what you think it means.

Ukraine and Energy

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America’s booming natural gas production could help Ukraine keep the heat and lights on amid Russia’s latest threat to cut off supplies, if the US cuts through troublesome red tape, lawmakers said. … The U.S. has port facilities that turn natural gas into liquid for export and more are under construction, but shipping to any country not bound by a free trade agreement with the US requires a federal permit. Since 2011, DOE has approved six [count ’em] applications for permits to export natural gas to non-free trade agreement nations, but Ukraine is not one of them. … [The] “Domestic Freedom and Global Prosperity Act”…would grant immediate approval of the 24 pending applications currently filed with the Department of Energy…. “This would send the clear signal that we are serious about enlarging the scope of natural gas exports, and immediately undercut Russia’s dominance,” [Congressman Fred (R, MI)] Upton said. “Russia has chosen to wield its energy resources as a geopolitical weapon to inflict harm on others. As the world’s emerging energy superpower, America has a newfound responsibility to help our allies.”

There are a lot of logistics problems along this path to work out, but that puts a premium on getting started; these problems cannot be allowed to serve as excuses for not bothering. Again.

On top of that, we also need to stop sending signals and start sending stuff—like oil and gas, like weapons, like intel, like…—to Ukraine, as well as sending oil and gas to Germany and the rest of the EU.

“Elections” in Ukraine

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Pro-Russian “insurgents” in the Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk are claiming that 90% of voters backed sovereignty and separation from Ukraine (and eventual incorporation into Russia). (Why is that the supporters of such things always claim 90% of the vote went their way? Why not something more plausible, like 55%, even 62%?)

That 90% number is especially interesting here, given the demographics of those oblasts. 30% of the folks living in Luhansk, the oblast that forms the eastern tip of Ukraine, jutting into Russia, are native Ukrainian speakers, not Russian, which suggests they’re ethnic Ukrainian, not ethnic Russian (leaving aside the understanding that all of the citizens there are Ukrainian citizens, regardless of ethnicity). 24% of Donetsk, which sits on the southwestern boundary of Luhansk and fronts on the Sea of Azov (which opens into the Black Sea, and thence into the Mediterranean), are native Ukrainian speakers.

To get to that 90% number, then, two-thirds of those ethnic Ukrainians in Luhansk and three-fifths of them in Donetsk would have had to have favored leaving Ukraine, also. That’s not very plausible.

Alternatively, the ethnic Ukrainians would have had to have not voted at all in significant number—afraid to vote, apathetic (unlikely in that charged atmosphere), or…. Which makes the “elections” not at all representative of what the folks truly want.

Also, keep in mind that these two oblasts, in 1991, voted for independence from Russia by an 83%-13% margin.

Hmm….

Who Can’t Handle the Truth?

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Democrats, controlling the Senate, blocked efforts to join the House investigation of the Benghazi fiasco.

Democratic Senator Bob Menendez (D, NJ) objected, saying the probe is politically motivated and without merit.

Of course, blocking Senate participation in a joint investigation isn’t at all politically motivated or meritless.

If this thing truly is mere politics, why not join in, with enthusiasm? Why not push for full release of unredacted documents and emails and etc from State, DoD, and the White House? Why not expose all of these to the light of day and to the eyes of Americans? If there really is no there there, that will become painfully obvious, in short order, to the Republicans’ severe damage.

Of what, then, are the Democrats so afraid? That there is a significant there there?

Pride and Reluctance

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Two hundred and seventy-six young girls were kidnapped by the terrorist organization* Boko Haram, whose leader is threatening to sell them into slavery, if he hasn’t already.

On the matter of offers from the US, Great Britain, Israel, and a number of others of military help both in dealing with these terrorists and presently in recovering the stolen girls, though, Nigerian pride seems more important than the safety of Nigerian children.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan’s spokesman Doyin Okupe, has said about foreign military aid

Nigeria is a very proud nation. We feel that to subjugate our military under another world power would be to really compromise our integrity.

How is your national integrity, President Jonathan, not already disastrously compromised by your failure to protect even your children and your present inability to recover them?

 

*Aside: Why is it that so many “news” organizations and “journalists,” all of whom pretend to respectability, keep referring to such gangs as “insurgents” or “radical Islamists?” Why are they so desperate to avoid naming these organized mobs for what they are: terrorists?