Category Archives: foreign policy

Begging Iran

Posted on by
Reply

The subheadline tells the tale:

Biden administration mounts last-ditch appeal to Tehran, while also pushing to keep cease-fire talks alive

And this from Secretary of State Antony Blinken:

We are engaged in intense diplomacy pretty much around the clock with a very simple message: all parties must refrain from escalation. It’s also critical that we break this cycle by reaching a cease-fire in Gaza.

And this from a carefully unidentified US official:

We’re preparing to defend Israel in an April-like manner[.]

This timidity by our government is only leading to continued deaths of Israeli citizens at the hands of Iran and its terrorist surrogates, and the continued deaths of those Palestinians about whom the Biden-Harris administration pretends so shrilly to be worried, as Iran’s terrorist surrogate Hamas continues to hold Palestinians as shields.

Equating Israel’s struggle to defend itself in a war for its survival against its terrorist attackers with those terrorist attackers is disgustingly, deeply immoral. Defending Israel in an April-like manner, wherein American forces, along with Jordanian and British forces, shot down an important number of the 300+ missiles, rockets, and cruise missiles Iran fired at Israel that April, was sufficiently inadequate that Israel finds itself in a similar strait today.

Purely defensive efforts are wholly inadequate.  Without further second-guessing the Biden-Harris effort last April, what will be necessary today are Rules Two and Three. The US must destroy Hezbollah and Houthi launching facilities, whether or not they’re preparing to launch, along with those terrorists’ missile and rocket storage sites and their ammunition and fuel dumps. The US must go further: our forces must sink the Iranian navy afloat and destroy Iran’s air defense sites and its launch facilities and associated missile and rocket storage sites.

That will leave Israel free to deal with the close-in threats: those rockets, missiles, and cruise missiles that do get through to range of Israel’s defenses, and to deal with Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist forces.

In the meantime, though, Hezbollah is firing rockets into northern Israel, killing tens of Israeli men, women, and children, all with no response from the US.

Israel is a critical ally of ours. Either we are a critical ally of Israel, or we are not. The Biden-Harris administration’s activities are not encouraging.

Here’s a Thought

Posted on by
Reply

I do get them on occasion.  The Five Eyes Alliance, consisting of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, have issued a report delineating the utter dependence of those nations (and the Western world at large, I add) on the People’s Republic of China for supplies of rare earth elements, elements that are Critical Items in producing a nation’s modern weapons and that are Critic Items in national economies dependent on computers, communications, and infrastructure distribution nodes. That report, DECREASING RARE EARTHS DEPENDENCY: HOW THE FIVE EYES ALLIANCE CAN MINIMISE RARE EARTHS TRADING RISK WITH CHINA (all caps in the original) can be read here.

The report recommended diversify[ing] away from China for the importing of rare earth elements (REEs). The authors proposed this be achieved through “two key policies:”

  • broadening the scope of the Five Eyes Alliance to include increased trade and cooperation on REEs and REEs-dependent goods and services
  • actively seeking alternative sources, whether through new import sources or substitutes for REEs

My thought concerns that last. The Five Eyes, along with the nations rimming the South China Sea, particularly Viet Nam, the Philippines, and the Republic of China, also along with the Republic of Korea and Japan—all of which are even more dependent on rare earth acquisition—should begin actively mining the South China Sea floor, which is rich with rare earth nodules just lying around on the surface of the floor. In support of those mining operations, the Five Eyes’ navies should be prepared to sink PLAN shipping that attempts to interfere with this mining of the sea floor underlying these international waters. If those additional interested nations choose not to participate, the Five Eyes should proceed anyway.

That might seem more confrontational than heretofore, but that’s what we need instead of backpedaling all the time or constantly seeking to accommodate the PRC.

Harris Intends to Continue…

Posted on by
Reply

…her boss’, Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s, disdain for Israel and that nation’s obligation (not merely right) to defend itself, an obligation that of necessity requires it to destroy an enemy whose openly stated goal includes the butchery of Israeli women and children en route to the extermination of Israel the nation.

Here’s Progressive-Democrat Vice President and likely Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential nominee Kamala Harris on the matter of Hamas creche-mate Hezbollah’s attack on Israel’s Druze children in the northern village of Majdal Shams as cited by The Wall Street Journal:

[A]lthough Israel has a right to defend itself, she would “not be silent” about “the death of far too many innocent civilians.”

This is Harris cynically naively taking the terrorist Hamas at its word regarding the entity’s casualty claims, claims that are carefully undifferentiated between civilian and combatant casualties and that are wholly unsubstantiated. This is Harris, also, completely disregarding Israel’s statements regarding the civilian to combatant casualty ratio in this Hamas-inflicted war while also disregarding the civilian casualty losses Israel has suffered at the hands of both Hamas and Hezbollah.

Harris also is committing the moral equivalence sewage of equating Hamas and Hezbollah’s terrorism with Israel’s fight for its existence against these terrorists: she’s demanding an unconditional cease fire, immediately.

I will not be silent. So to everyone who has been calling for a cease-fire, and to everyone who has been calling for peace, I see you and I hear you. Let’s get the deal done so we can get a cease-fire to end the war. Let’s bring the hostages home, and let’s provide much-needed relief to the Palestinian people.

She doesn’t care (it’s not possible to conclude she doesn’t know) that such a cease fire would benefit only the terrorists while doing nothing to recover the terrorist-seized hostages, many of whom the terrorists have already butchered while held or allowed to die of injuries while held. She doesn’t care (it’s not possible to conclude she doesn’t know) that Hamas will not agree to release the hostages or the hostage bodies unless and until Israel withdraws completely from the Gaza Strip, leaving Hamas in place to reconstitute, rearm, and resume attacking and butchering Israeli citizens. This is a straightforward continuation of Biden’s anti-Israeli policy. All that Harris lacks, so far, is a public intent to interfere with arms resupply of Israel, as Biden has done.

This is the candidate the Progressive-Democratic Party wants to put in the White House. This is the anti-Israeli policy Party wants to infuse throughout Congress by expanding its Senate majority and seizing a majority in the House.

White House Hatred of Israel

Posted on by
Reply

That’s what this Wall Street Journal editors’ lede implies, if the claim is true.

Is US foreign policy on autopilot? On Wednesday we learned the Biden Administration is imposing sanctions on another Israeli while reissuing a sanctions waiver that lets Iran access more than $10 billion in frozen funds. Its priorities reflect a policy that long ago was overtaken by events.

That’s not autopilot. That’s the Biden White House continuing those folks’ long-standing disdain, extending to open hatred, of all things Israeli. Why do they think that way? The position is so irrational—Israel is our only real ally in the Middle East; it’s the only democracy there; the nation is inclusive enough to include Arab citizens and Arab Knesset members; the nation bends over backwards, even today, to avoid civilian casualties in a war inflicted by a terrorist entity for which civilian casualties, even of their own brethren, are the goal—that only those White House persons can answer the question. If they think about it at all.

The editors concluded their piece with this:

[W]e got Iran-backed war and assaults on US forces and commercial shipping. What will it take for Mr Biden and his advisers to recognize their failure and change course?

Maybe Biden, et al., don’t see a need for course correction. Maybe they don’t think their pro-Iran, anti-Israel moves are failures.

What’s at least as bad is the silence from the Progressive-Democratic Party regarding Biden’s moves vis-à-vis Iran and Israel. That the syndicate is so carefully silent suggests its own complicity in this irrational hatred.

But They are the Same Theater

Posted on by
Reply

A letter writer in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section expressed his concern for NATO’s increasing emphasis on the People’s Republic of China threat in the Pacific, saying in part,

NATO, however, shouldn’t be pushing into Asia or treating Europe and Asia as the same theater.

And

…founding charter: to maintain the peace in the North Atlantic and defend its member states from a Russian attack.

Asia, the Pacific theater, dominated as it is by the enemy nation, the People’s Republic of China, and the European theater that’s formally the DOC of NATO are, in fact the same theater; the two regions are adjacent Areas of Responsibility.

This isn’t a matter of who’s got the intercontinental reach of missiles. It’s the closely intertwined—and dependency creating—trade regimes and economies, as the PRC exports at artificially lowered price its goods into Europe; the PRC engages in active cyber espionage and cyber sabotage activities; the PRC engages in active dis- and misinformation, pushing as it does its state-owned and -run social media facilities like TikTok and ecommerce facilities like TEMU, one of which actively pushes false claims (not information) and both of which actively hoover up individualized personal and business information for the use of the PRC’s intelligence community; the PRC’s PLA moves into the eastern Pacific and western Atlantic Oceans and into the northeastern Mediterranean Sea with its dual use commercial and military seaports and airports; and on and on.

Maintaining the peace in the North Atlantic, thus, requires the PRC threat to that theater be addressed. Furthermore, the PRC’s nakedly open support of Russia in the latter’s equally naked invasion of a sovereign nation makes it imperative that “defending…from a Russian attack” involve addressing the PRC threat. That’s optimally done at the source; hence the need to emphasize the threat to NATO interests and security by including Asia as one of the AORs in the NATO theater of operations.

Distance in the modern world is nonexistent. It’s entirely appropriate that NATO expand its area of regard and learn to do two things at once.