Category Archives: foreign policy

That’ll Show ‘Em

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is shaking his finger very firmly at Hamas and sanctioning the terrorist gang and its supporters.

The sanctions include 10 senior members and “financial facilitators” of the Hamas terrorist group, as well as roughly 1,000 individuals and entities connected to Iranian terror financing. The sanctions struck Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terror organizations in the Middle East that a senior Treasury official said were part of “a massive financial network.”

Ooh, ooh. Be still, my heart.

Having already moved to release $6 billion dollars to Iran for its relay to the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah (and, allegedly, moved with Qatar to delay that delivery), these sanctions are an insultingly puny response to the butchery Hamas is inflicting on Israeli women, children, and babies and that Hezbollah and Iran are threatening to do.

Biden’s Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen:

The United States is taking swift and decisive action to target Hamas’ financiers and facilitators….

How much money and other value is affected by these sanctions? Neither Biden nor Yellen is saying.

No. What’s needed is free-flowing weapons and ammunition to Israel as the IDF needs them, and two carrier groups’ kinetic response in Lebanon and Syria to destroy Hezbollah should that terrorist gang attack Israel.

Full stop.

Kasparov Screwed the Pooch

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Garry Kasparov, Renew Democracy Initiative Chairman and Russian Action Committee Co-Founder has suggested, in his Friday Wall Street Journal op-ed, that Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden move to decisively defeat[] Russia and Iran and their terrorist proxies, and then step out of the Presidential campaign. So far, so good.

Then, however, he suggested this—and he was dead serious:

[R]ather than proceed with an unpredictable rematch with Mr. Trump, the president could endorse a younger leader up to the challenge: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Lloyd Austin, the Woke SecDef who’s severely damaging our military with his push for Woke Reeducation Programs in lieu of pushing for more weapons, ammunition, and combat training?

Wow.

Kasparov usually is better informed than this.

False Choices

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editors are correct that, as their subheadline says,

Helping Kyiv won’t rob weapons to fight Hamas or Hezbollah.

This is in response to some otherwise reasonably intelligent politicians insist on that false choice—that it’s either Ukraine or Israel. Senator Josh Hawley (R, MO), for instance:

Israel is facing existential threat. Any funding for Ukraine should be redirected to Israel immediately[.]

This is a foolishly false dichotomy, for all that, in Hawley’s case, it centers on his disdain for Ukraine and his lack of understanding of the threat the Russian barbarian hordes present.

The false choice representation is broader than that, though.

It’s also a false choice between either Israel or Ukraine, and our southern border, and it’s a false choice between any of those and supporting the Republic of China in deterring the People’s Republic of China or in fighting the PRC if they go ahead and invade.

What’s necessary—and more generally beneficial—is a reallocation of existing expenditures. That requires the Progressive-Democratic Party Representatives and Senators to either get out of the way or work with Republicans in a serious manner to do the reallocations.

It also requires timid Republican Senators to get out of the way or work seriously within their party and for the Republican House caucus to deal, with finality, with the Chaos Gang led by Florida’s Matt Gaetz and Texas’ Chip Roy and get serious about leading the House.

See No Evil

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The Hamas terrorists coordinated their assault on Israel with the terrorist Hezbollah, and both had serious planning help from Iran, via that nation’s terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This is from senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah.

Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land, and sea incursions….
Details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas…and Hezbollah….

And

A European official and an adviser to the Syrian government…gave the same account of Iran’s involvement in the lead-up to the attack as the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members.

But our Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden, through his State Department Secretary, Antony Blinken, insists

We have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack, but there is certainly a long relationship.

Appease evil, instead.

Couple Thoughts re Ramaswamy’s Thoughts

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Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has some ideas about what to do were he to be elected President. I have some ideas about those ideas.

Let’s have a reasonable path to peace. Make a permanent commitment that NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO, but in return, require Russia to exit its military partnership with China. Now that weakens China. Now, Xi Jinping is gonna have to think twice before going after Taiwan.

This is breathtakingly naïve. On what basis does Ramaswamy think Putin would honor any agreement? Russia already has welched on the Budapest Memoranda, Minsk I, and Minsk II, and he faked his 2014 “referendum” that he used to rationalize his occupation of Crimea. That’s just Russia’s recent history with Ukraine. Then there’s Putin’s avowed goal of reconstituting the Russia’s Soviet (Union) empire. Ramaswamy’s plan for this “peace” of his also includes an in-place cessation of the fighting—forcing Ukraine to surrender the 20%, or so, of its territory that Putin currently occupies to him, which only rewards Putin for his invasion.

Then there’s the bit about Russia leaving its alliance with the People’s Republic of China, which he alleges would weaken the PRC. What makes Ramaswamy think that alliance itself doesn’t weaken the PRC? Russia desperately needs money and weapons/ammunition. Iran and northern Korea can’t supply any of that in sufficient numbers; only the PRC can—at the expense of its own finances and military equipage. Beyond that, the PRC already is spending treasure propping up the Russian economy and war effort.

Finally, there’s the fact that Russia winning in Ukraine—getting to keep those 20%—would only embolden Xi, not give him pause.

…doubling down on his promise to shrink the federal bureaucracy by 70%….

This actually is a worthy goal. However. There are some 2 million civilians employed by the Federal government. Assume, arguendo, he’s capable of getting rid of those 70%. What’s his timeline for terminating 1.4 million civilians? He never says. What will be the impact (viz., unemployment insurance, food stamps) of dumping 1.4 million out-of-work workers onto the private economy? He never says anything about that, either. How will he handle the nation’s economic dislocation resulting from dumping 1.4 million more out-of-work workers onto the private economy? He never says anything about that, either.