Seasons in the Kingdom
Friday, December 27, 2013
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Merry Christmas - Namdaemun circa 19th Century
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| NOTE: This is before t he Japanese Colonial Period, when a similar picture would show a street car rail line going through the gate. |
Friday, December 20, 2013
The Happy Couple
 | |
| Ri Sol-ju, left, is pictured Tuesday without a Kim Il Sung badge as she attends a function marking the second anniversary of Kim Jong-il’s death, with her husband Kim Jong-un, at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang. [Rodong Sinmun] From supreme leader Kim Jong-un down to the poorest farmer, what the approximately 24.7 million North Korean citizens have in common is the required duty to wear a badge bearing the portraits of Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong-il. Joonjang Daily |
North Korean Puppetry?
Is Kim Jong-un a Puppet of Hardline Brass?
Speculation is growing that hardline North Korean generals were behind the execution of leader Kim Jong-un's uncle Jang Song-taek and that Kim was merely their pawn.
That would be worrying for South Korea, which would face an increased threat of military provocations....
That would be worrying for South Korea, which would face an increased threat of military provocations....
South Korea's 'juicy bars': one woman's story of slavery and escape
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| Wayne Algood, circa 1968, Sinchon Village Alley |
Then...
...and now. Click for CNN Freedom Project.
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| Glorification of Prostitution in Korea. Click here to see interview about modern sex slavery in Korea. |
Monday, December 16, 2013
Friday, December 13, 2013
DPRK - the future?
What does Jang Song-thaek's ousting mean for North Korea? – Q&A
Key questions answered on the very public purge of Kim Jong-un's hitherto powerful uncle
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at a politburo meeting in Pyongyang: it is unclear whether the purge is a move to consolidate his power. Photograph: Kcna/Reuters
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Family Business in the North - Sacked
China Says Jang Song-taek's Ouster an 'Internal Affair'
Beijing "hopes that the North will achieve national stability, economic development
and happiness for its people," Hong Lei told reporters. He added it remains committed to maintaining traditionally friendly relations with the North.
Hong said he did not know whether the North had notified China of Jang's arrest beforehand.
Hong said he did not know whether the North had notified China of Jang's arrest beforehand.
(read full article by clicking on the title)
Friday, December 6, 2013
Shakeup in North Korea?
Aide to N. Korean leader's ousted uncle seeks asylum in South: media
6 hours ago
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea could be facing its most serious defection in 15 years as South Korean media said on Friday that a man who managed funds for the ousted uncle of leader Kim Jong Un had fled the isolated country and sought asylum in South Korea.
South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) had no knowledge of the defection, lawmakers said in Seoul after they were briefed by the head of the spy agency.The aide, who was not named, was being protected by South Korean officials in a secret location in China, cable news network YTN and Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper said, citing sources familiar with the matter.
YTN said the man managed funds for Jang Song Thaek, whose marriage to Kim's aunt and proximity to the young leader made him one of the most powerful men in North Korea.
Jang was relieved of his posts last month, according to the NIS, and the television network said the sacking could have followed the aide's defection.
YTN said the aide also had knowledge of funds belonging to Kim and his father, former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. If true, the defection would likely be the first time in 15 years a significant insider from the Pyongyang regime has switched sides.
Impoverished but nuclear-capable North Korea and the rich, democratic South are still technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
A spokesman for South Korea's Unification Ministry, Kim Eui-do, and officials at the Foreign Ministry said the defection report could not be confirmed.
Jung Chung-rae, a member of the South Korean parliament's Intelligence Committee, told reporters the intelligence service had said it did not know about the defection, but that two of Jang's relatives who were serving in embassies overseas had been recalled.
"It is true that Jang's brother-in-law and nephew have been called back to North Korea," Jung cited the NIS as saying.
Jang himself is alive and appears to be safe, South Korean officials have said.
Jang has survived previous purges and official displeasure, thanks largely to his sometimes tempestuous marriage to Kim Kyong Hui, the daughter of North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung.
"WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE SITUATION," CHINA SAYS
North Korea's ruling Kim family is deeply venerated and feared. It is ruthless about protecting its security and privacy and little is known about the inner workings of the regime.
The aide requested asylum about two months ago and was currently in China, YTN said. In Beijing, there were no signs of any additional security around the South Korean embassy.
Asked about the South Korean media reports, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said: "We have noted the reports, but do not understand the situation."
South Korea's intelligence service has also said two of Jang's close associates were executed last month for corruption.
These reports have not been confirmed either.
YTN said Jang's aide fled to China some time in late September or early October and that Jang could have been sacked because of this.
"A source familiar with the matter said the aide immediately requested asylum from the South Korean government and South Korean officials are currently protecting him at a secret place in China," it said.
China, Pyongyang's only major ally, usually resists allowing defectors from North Korea to seek asylum elsewhere.
YTN said the aide tried to escape to Laos, a route favored by other defectors, but Chinese authorities prevented him from leaving.
U.S. officials have also sought custody of the aide, the television station said.
About 25,000 North Koreans have defected to the South but few of them were highly placed in Pyongyang.
The major defectors include Hwang Jang Yop, a high-level Worker's Party ideologue who was the architect of the Juche (self-reliance) ideology of North Korea, who sought asylum in the South in 1997.
Kim Jong Un's aunt, his mother's sister, fled to the United States in 1998, media reports have said.
In 2002, a North Korean nuclear scientist named Kyong Won Ha escaped the country, although few details are known.
(Reporting by Ju-min Park and Jack Kim; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Nick Macfie)
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Friday, October 18, 2013
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Thursday, September 19, 2013
UPDATE from nandupress
For those of you who follow my postings of important articles relevant to Asia history and current events, I wanted you to know that I am still here. I have had a quad bypass this summer and now I am undergoing treatment for renal cancer. I will be fine, I hope, in the end, but this is not the end. As I get my energy back I will continue to update this blog. But, it is difficult to focus as I watch the Obama Administration implode and becomes an embarrassment aboard and here. My best to all, tim norris
Friday, September 6, 2013
Friday, August 23, 2013
National Review: America the Trivial - VDH
The Kardashians and Anthony Weiner are deemed more worthy of attention than what affects the security and prosperity of our nation.
President Obama hits the greens in Martha's Vineyard on August 18.
Two quite different 21st-century Americas are emerging. The nation is not so much divided by “wars” between the rich and poor, men and women, or white and non-white. Instead, there is the world of reality versus that of triviality.
Yet the beneficiaries mostly ignore these elemental efforts. They instead prefer to fixate on the alleged sexual creepiness of big-city political mediocrities like Bob Filner and Anthony Weiner.
As we sleep, 7,000 miles away there are still thousands of American soldiers of all races, ages, classes, and genders in godforsaken conditions fighting the Taliban to allow millions in Afghanistan the chance for an alternative to medieval theocracy and to deter terrorists.
Meanwhile, back home, the nation is focused not on such existential struggles but is transfixed by racial melodramas.
Was Oprah victimized by racial insensitivity in a Swiss boutique when inquiring about purchasing a $38,000 crocodile purse? Were ten black American Idolcontestants really victims of “cruel and inhumane” treatment because their arrest records were brought up on the show? Should a rodeo clown — whose stock in trade is humor — be sent to “sensitivity training” for wearing an Obama mask?
At the end of two years of near-record drought in California, the fate of hundreds of thousands of acres of irrigated farmlands, which feed millions of Americans and earn billions of dollars in critical foreign exchange, hinges on a snow-filled winter in the Sierra Nevada. You might never know of that razor’s edge from the state legislature. Rather than discussing new dams and canals, it debated whether transgendered youth in public schools could use the bathrooms of their choice and whether residents should need a permit to buy ammunition.
The historic role of government is changing before our eyes. President Obama is making the argument that the executive branch by presidential fiat can pick and choose which laws should and should not be faithfully executed — whether Obamacare, immigration amnesties, or No Child Left Behind statutes.
The fate of the entire concept of voluntary tax compliance is currently endangered by the politicization of the Internal Revenue Service. Whether the government can monitor the communications of either reporters or average citizens depends on getting to the bottom of the National Security Agency and Justice Department/Associated Press scandals.
Instead, the media seem more interested in whether Obama is playing golf on Martha’s Vineyard.
Why is the country consumed by the trivial while snoozing through the essential? We have become a nation of instant electronic communications — Twitter, Facebook, cell phones, and the Internet — even as reading and math scores plummet in our schools, and newspapers and magazines go broke. We can communicate information at the speed of light but have trouble finding anything meaningful to send back and forth.
In prior times, writers, directors, and actors endeavored to present television drama characterized by good acting and engaging scripts. Now, it is more profitable and apparently more entertaining just to film pseudo-celebrities talking, eating, and agonizing over the day’s banalities, as with Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
Yet sometimes we get vicarious pleasure from watching oddballs do what most of us won’t or can’t do. Nineteenth-century-style men who cut timber, mine gold, drive big rigs, and catch fish on the high seas are now the subject of big reality-television hits. Apparently, those who did not go to Ivy League schools or make a pile on Wall Street appear as more genuine Americans — at least in our dreams and fantasies.
Yet part of America’s confusion about what is important and petty begins at the top.
Reggie Love, the erstwhile presidential assistant and “body man” to President Obama, recently reported on the critical moments of the mission to kill Osama bin Laden. The president apparently was not glued to live video feeds, as the photos from his reelection campaign suggested.
“Most people were like down in the Situation Room,” Love said, “and [the president] was like, ‘I’m not going to be down there, I can’t watch this entire thing.’ So he, myself, Pete Souza, the White House photographer, Marvin [Nicholson], we must have played 15 games of spades.”
The commander-in-chief was playing cards while Navy SEALs risked their lives to kill America’s No. 1 enemy — only later to use photos of himself watching live feeds for his reelection sloganeering: “Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive!”
That pretense sums up the growing void between real and trivial America.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His new book, The Savior Generals, is just out from Bloomsbury Books. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com. © 2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc
Saturday, August 17, 2013
DIPLOMAT: America & Europe in Asia
European firms are providing their Asian customers with some core capabilities.
A neglected aspect of the analysis of the evolution of Asian defense and security is the contribution of the European defense industry. Major players in Europe (and in the United States) are seeking global markets to remain viable and to evolve over time. Defense and security is not a static business; it is highly competitive and modernization is always a key element of the equation. Global customers are a crucial element for U.S. or European defense firms to remain on the cutting edge and to be viable in challenging economic conditions.
European firms provide capabilities in many areas of interest to Asian customers, notably military aerospace, weapons and naval systems. The military aerospace and weapons part of this equation warrants particular note, as does the dynamics of change in the Asian market for these products. The point is simply this: European firms are providing core capabilities for Asian customers and are an important part of the military equation in region.
Friday, August 16, 2013
VDH & the importance of Geography an article from the National Review
Don’t Know Much About Geography
Today’s leaders are totally ignorant of what used to be the building blocks of learning.
In Sam Cooke’s classic 1959 hit “Wonderful World,” the lyrics downplayed formal learning with lines like, “Don’t know much about history . . . Don’t know much about geography.”
Over a half-century after Cooke wrote that lighthearted song, such ignorance is now all too real. Even our best and brightest — or rather our elites especially — are not too familiar with history or geography.
Both disciplines are the building blocks of learning. Without awareness of natural and human geography, we are reduced to a self-contained void without accurate awareness of the space around us. An ignorance of history creates the same sort of self-imposed exile, leaving us ignorant of both what came before us and what is likely to follow.
In the case of geography, Harvard Law School graduate Barack Obama recently lectured, “If we don’t deepen our ports all along the Gulf — places like Charleston, South Carolina; or Savannah, Georgia; or Jacksonville, Florida . . . ” The problem is that all the examples he cited are cities on the East Coast, not the Gulf of Mexico. If Obama does not know where these ports are, how can he deepen them?
Obama’s geographical confusion has become habitual. He once claimed that he had been to all “57 states.” He also assumed that Kentucky was closer to Arkansas than it was to his adjacent home state of Illinois.
In reference to the Falkland Islands, President Obama called them the Maldives — islands southwest of India — apparently in a botched effort to use the Argentine-preferred “Malvinas.” The two island groups may sound somewhat alike, but they are continents apart. Again, without basic geographical knowledge, the president’s commentary on the Falklands is rendered superficial.
When in the state of Hawaii, Obama announced that he was in “Asia.” He lamented that the U.S. Army’s Arabic-language translators assigned to Iraq could better be used in Afghanistan, failing to recognize that Arabic isn’t the language of Afghanistan. And he also apparently thought Austrians speak a language other than German.
The president’s geographical illiteracy is a symptom of the nation’s growing ignorance of once-essential subjects such as geography and history. The former is not taught any more as a required subject in many of our schools and colleges. The latter has often been redefined as race, class, and gender oppression so as to score melodramatic points in the present rather than to learn from the tragedy of the past.
The president in his 2009 Cairo speech credited the European Renaissance and Enlightenment to Islam’s “light of learning” — an exaggeration if not an outright untruth on both counts.
Closer to home, the president claimed in 2011 that Texas had historically been Republican — while in reality it was a mostly Jim Crow Democratic state for over a century. Republicans started consistently carrying Texas only after 1980.
Recently, Obama claimed that 20th-century Communist strongman Ho Chi Minh “was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson.” That pop assertion is improbable, given that Ho systematically liquidated his opponents, slaughtered thousands in land-redistribution schemes, and brooked no dissent.
Even more ahistorical was Vice President Joe Biden’s suggestion that George W. Bush should have gone on television in 2008 to address the nation as President Roosevelt had done in 1929 — a time when there was neither a President Roosevelt nor televisions available for purchase. In 2011, a White House press kit confused Wyoming with Colorado — apparently because they’re both rectangular-shaped states out West.
Our geographically and historically challenged leaders are emblematic of disturbing trends in American education that include a similar erosion in grammar, English composition, and basic math skills.
The controversial Lois Lerner, a senior official at the IRS — an agency whose stock in trade is numbers — claimed that she was “not good at math” when she admitted that she did not know that one-fourth of 300 is 75.
In the zero-sum game of the education curriculum, each newly added therapeutic discipline eliminated an old classical one. The result is that if Americans emote more and have more politically correct thoughts on the environment, race, class, and gender, they are less able to advance their beliefs through fact-based knowledge.
Despite supposedly tough new standards and vast investments, about 56 percent of students in recent California public-school tests did not perform up to their grade levels in English. Only about half met their grade levels in math.
A degree from our most prestigious American university is no guarantee a graduate holding such a credential will know the number of states or the location of Savannah. If we wonder why the Ivy League–trained Obama seems confused about where cities, countries, and continents are, we might remember that all but one Ivy League university eliminated their geography departments years ago.
As a rule now, when our leaders allude to a place or an event in the past, just assume their references are dead wrong.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His new book, The Savior Generals is just out from Bloomsbury Books. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com. © 2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc
Over a half-century after Cooke wrote that lighthearted song, such ignorance is now all too real. Even our best and brightest — or rather our elites especially — are not too familiar with history or geography.
Both disciplines are the building blocks of learning. Without awareness of natural and human geography, we are reduced to a self-contained void without accurate awareness of the space around us. An ignorance of history creates the same sort of self-imposed exile, leaving us ignorant of both what came before us and what is likely to follow.
In the case of geography, Harvard Law School graduate Barack Obama recently lectured, “If we don’t deepen our ports all along the Gulf — places like Charleston, South Carolina; or Savannah, Georgia; or Jacksonville, Florida . . . ” The problem is that all the examples he cited are cities on the East Coast, not the Gulf of Mexico. If Obama does not know where these ports are, how can he deepen them?
Obama’s geographical confusion has become habitual. He once claimed that he had been to all “57 states.” He also assumed that Kentucky was closer to Arkansas than it was to his adjacent home state of Illinois.
In reference to the Falkland Islands, President Obama called them the Maldives — islands southwest of India — apparently in a botched effort to use the Argentine-preferred “Malvinas.” The two island groups may sound somewhat alike, but they are continents apart. Again, without basic geographical knowledge, the president’s commentary on the Falklands is rendered superficial.
When in the state of Hawaii, Obama announced that he was in “Asia.” He lamented that the U.S. Army’s Arabic-language translators assigned to Iraq could better be used in Afghanistan, failing to recognize that Arabic isn’t the language of Afghanistan. And he also apparently thought Austrians speak a language other than German.
The president’s geographical illiteracy is a symptom of the nation’s growing ignorance of once-essential subjects such as geography and history. The former is not taught any more as a required subject in many of our schools and colleges. The latter has often been redefined as race, class, and gender oppression so as to score melodramatic points in the present rather than to learn from the tragedy of the past.
The president in his 2009 Cairo speech credited the European Renaissance and Enlightenment to Islam’s “light of learning” — an exaggeration if not an outright untruth on both counts.
Closer to home, the president claimed in 2011 that Texas had historically been Republican — while in reality it was a mostly Jim Crow Democratic state for over a century. Republicans started consistently carrying Texas only after 1980.
Recently, Obama claimed that 20th-century Communist strongman Ho Chi Minh “was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson.” That pop assertion is improbable, given that Ho systematically liquidated his opponents, slaughtered thousands in land-redistribution schemes, and brooked no dissent.
Even more ahistorical was Vice President Joe Biden’s suggestion that George W. Bush should have gone on television in 2008 to address the nation as President Roosevelt had done in 1929 — a time when there was neither a President Roosevelt nor televisions available for purchase. In 2011, a White House press kit confused Wyoming with Colorado — apparently because they’re both rectangular-shaped states out West.
Our geographically and historically challenged leaders are emblematic of disturbing trends in American education that include a similar erosion in grammar, English composition, and basic math skills.
The controversial Lois Lerner, a senior official at the IRS — an agency whose stock in trade is numbers — claimed that she was “not good at math” when she admitted that she did not know that one-fourth of 300 is 75.
In the zero-sum game of the education curriculum, each newly added therapeutic discipline eliminated an old classical one. The result is that if Americans emote more and have more politically correct thoughts on the environment, race, class, and gender, they are less able to advance their beliefs through fact-based knowledge.
Despite supposedly tough new standards and vast investments, about 56 percent of students in recent California public-school tests did not perform up to their grade levels in English. Only about half met their grade levels in math.
A degree from our most prestigious American university is no guarantee a graduate holding such a credential will know the number of states or the location of Savannah. If we wonder why the Ivy League–trained Obama seems confused about where cities, countries, and continents are, we might remember that all but one Ivy League university eliminated their geography departments years ago.
As a rule now, when our leaders allude to a place or an event in the past, just assume their references are dead wrong.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His new book, The Savior Generals is just out from Bloomsbury Books. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com. © 2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc
Thursday, August 8, 2013
AMERICA as PILL BUG: VDH - the amazing shrinking Super Power
America as Pill Bug
We’ve all run across the pill bug in our gardens. At the first sign of danger, the tiny paranoid crustacean suddenly turns into a ball — in hopes the danger will have passed when he unrolls.
That roly-poly bug can serve as a fair symbol of present-day U.S. foreign policy, especially in our understandable weariness over Iraq, Afghanistan, and the scandals that are overwhelming the Obama administration.
On August 4, U.S. embassies across the Middle East simply closed on the basis of intelligence reports of planned al-Qaeda violence. The shutdown of 21 diplomatic facilities was the most extensive in recent American history.
Yet we still have over a month to go before the twelfth anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001, an iconic date for radical Islamists.
Such preemptive measures are no doubt sober and judicious. Yet if we shut down our entire public profile in the Middle East on the threat of terrorism, what will we do when more anti-American violence arises? Should we close more embassies for more days, or return home altogether?
Apparently al-Qaeda did not get the message that the administration’s euphemisms of “workplace violence,” “overseas contingency operations,” “man-caused disasters,” and jihad as “a holy struggle” were intended as outreach to the global Muslim community.
Instead, the terrorists are getting their second wind, as they interpret our loud magnanimity as weakness — or, more likely, simple confusion. They increasingly do not seem to fear U.S. retaliation for any planned assaults. Instead, al-Qaeda franchises expect Americans to adopt their new pill-bug mode of curling up until danger passes.
Our enemies have grounds for such cockiness. President Obama promised swift punishment for those who attacked U.S. installations in Benghazi and killed four Americans. So far the killers roam free. Rumors abound that they have been seen publicly in Libya.
Instead of blaming radical Islamist killers for that attack, the Obama reelection campaign team fobbed the assault off as the reaction to a supposedly right-wing, Islamophobic videomaker. That yarn was untrue and was greeted as politically correct appeasement in the Middle East.
All these Libyan developments took place against a backdrop of “lead from behind.” Was it wise for American officials to brag that the world’s largest military had taken a subordinate role in removing Moammar Qaddafi — in a military operation contingent on approval from the United Nations and the Arab League but not the U.S. Congress?
No one knows what to do about the mess in Syria. But when you do not know what to do, it is imprudent to periodically lay down “red lines.” Yet the administration has done just that to the Bashar al-Assad regime over the last two years.
In a similar vein, the administration has so far issued serial “deadlines” to the Iranians to cease the production of weapons-grade uranium. They don’t seem much worried about yet another deadline.
In Egypt, the United States went from abandoning ally and crook Hosni Mubarak to welcoming the freely elected and anti-American Muslim Brotherhood. Now, we are both praising and damning the military junta that overthrew President Mohamed Morsi. Do we still call that “the Arab Spring”? Is a junta still a junta, a coup still a coup?
Our entire anti-terrorism agenda is a paradox. Obama ran for office on the promise of shutting down Guantanamo Bay, curbing the Patriot Act, and ending renditions, preventive detention, and drone attacks. Then, in office, he went both hot and cold on all of them.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder hinted at trying accused terrorist killers such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian courts and holdingCIA interrogators legally responsible for enhanced interrogations. Then, the administration abruptly dropped those bad ideas and embraced or expanded many of the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols — and in many cases went far beyond anything envisioned by the prior administration.
These paradoxes were not lost on our terrorist enemies. The successors to Osama bin Laden apparently guessed that the Obama administration might not like America’s anti-terrorism policies any more than the terrorists themselves did.
News that the FBI scrutinized and then apparently forgot about unhinged Islamists such as Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Major Nidal Malik Hasan sent the wrong message to terrorists. Was the Obama administration more worried about hurting feelings than it was concerned to prevent further attacks?
Other rivals and enemies are now fully aware of our new pill-bug mode in the Middle East — and are willing to bet that it might apply everywhere. Without apparent worry over the U.S. reaction, Russia has given tentative asylum as a reward to Edward Snowden, who singlehandedly exposed — and sabotaged — a vast National Security Agency spying network. Increasingly, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan seem to be on their own with a bullying China, unsure whether to bend or resist.
Meanwhile, the new American pill bug curls up in hopes that the mounting dangers will just go away.
(from National Review)
— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution,Stanford University. His latest book is The Savior Generals, published this spring by Bloomsbury Press. You can reach him by e-mailingauthor@victorhanson.com. © 2013 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
That roly-poly bug can serve as a fair symbol of present-day U.S. foreign policy, especially in our understandable weariness over Iraq, Afghanistan, and the scandals that are overwhelming the Obama administration.
On August 4, U.S. embassies across the Middle East simply closed on the basis of intelligence reports of planned al-Qaeda violence. The shutdown of 21 diplomatic facilities was the most extensive in recent American history.
Yet we still have over a month to go before the twelfth anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001, an iconic date for radical Islamists.
Such preemptive measures are no doubt sober and judicious. Yet if we shut down our entire public profile in the Middle East on the threat of terrorism, what will we do when more anti-American violence arises? Should we close more embassies for more days, or return home altogether?
Apparently al-Qaeda did not get the message that the administration’s euphemisms of “workplace violence,” “overseas contingency operations,” “man-caused disasters,” and jihad as “a holy struggle” were intended as outreach to the global Muslim community.
Instead, the terrorists are getting their second wind, as they interpret our loud magnanimity as weakness — or, more likely, simple confusion. They increasingly do not seem to fear U.S. retaliation for any planned assaults. Instead, al-Qaeda franchises expect Americans to adopt their new pill-bug mode of curling up until danger passes.
Our enemies have grounds for such cockiness. President Obama promised swift punishment for those who attacked U.S. installations in Benghazi and killed four Americans. So far the killers roam free. Rumors abound that they have been seen publicly in Libya.
Instead of blaming radical Islamist killers for that attack, the Obama reelection campaign team fobbed the assault off as the reaction to a supposedly right-wing, Islamophobic videomaker. That yarn was untrue and was greeted as politically correct appeasement in the Middle East.
All these Libyan developments took place against a backdrop of “lead from behind.” Was it wise for American officials to brag that the world’s largest military had taken a subordinate role in removing Moammar Qaddafi — in a military operation contingent on approval from the United Nations and the Arab League but not the U.S. Congress?
No one knows what to do about the mess in Syria. But when you do not know what to do, it is imprudent to periodically lay down “red lines.” Yet the administration has done just that to the Bashar al-Assad regime over the last two years.
In a similar vein, the administration has so far issued serial “deadlines” to the Iranians to cease the production of weapons-grade uranium. They don’t seem much worried about yet another deadline.
In Egypt, the United States went from abandoning ally and crook Hosni Mubarak to welcoming the freely elected and anti-American Muslim Brotherhood. Now, we are both praising and damning the military junta that overthrew President Mohamed Morsi. Do we still call that “the Arab Spring”? Is a junta still a junta, a coup still a coup?
Our entire anti-terrorism agenda is a paradox. Obama ran for office on the promise of shutting down Guantanamo Bay, curbing the Patriot Act, and ending renditions, preventive detention, and drone attacks. Then, in office, he went both hot and cold on all of them.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder hinted at trying accused terrorist killers such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian courts and holding
These paradoxes were not lost on our terrorist enemies. The successors to Osama bin Laden apparently guessed that the Obama administration might not like America’s anti-terrorism policies any more than the terrorists themselves did.
News that the FBI scrutinized and then apparently forgot about unhinged Islamists such as Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Major Nidal Malik Hasan sent the wrong message to terrorists. Was the Obama administration more worried about hurting feelings than it was concerned to prevent further attacks?
Other rivals and enemies are now fully aware of our new pill-bug mode in the Middle East — and are willing to bet that it might apply everywhere. Without apparent worry over the U.S. reaction, Russia has given tentative asylum as a reward to Edward Snowden, who singlehandedly exposed — and sabotaged — a vast National Security Agency spying network. Increasingly, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan seem to be on their own with a bullying China, unsure whether to bend or resist.
Meanwhile, the new American pill bug curls up in hopes that the mounting dangers will just go away.
(from National Review)
— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution,Stanford University. His latest book is The Savior Generals, published this spring by Bloomsbury Press. You can reach him by e-mailingauthor@victorhanson.com. © 2013 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
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