Right Wing Nut House

The Washington Post is reporting that the Pakistani government has signed a peace treaty with the Taliban who have been operating in the mountainous tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan:

The government of Pakistan signed a peace accord Tuesday with pro-Taliban forces in the volatile tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, agreeing to withdraw its troops from the region in return for the fighters’ pledge to stop attacks inside Pakistan and across the border.

Under the pact, foreign fighters would have to leave North Waziristan or live peaceable lives if they remained. The militias would not set up a “parallel” government administration.

Reached as Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, prepared to visit the Afghan capital Wednesday, the accord aroused alarm among some analysts in Afghanistan. They expressed concern that, whatever the militias promise, a Pakistani army withdrawal might backfire, emboldening the groups to operate more freely in Pakistan and to infiltrate more aggressively into Afghanistan to fight U.S. and allied forces there.

“This could be a very dangerous development,” said one official at an international agency, speaking anonymously because the issue is sensitive in both countries. “Until recently there has been relative stability in eastern Afghanistan, but now that could start to deteriorate.”

Obviously this is very bad news. The Taliban will likely honor the agreement in the breach which means that for all intents and purposes, they have a protected area to flee following their operations against NATO forces in Afghanistan. And even more problematically, it almost certainly means an increased troop committment will be necessary by NATO - if the Europeans are willing to pony up the men and material in an effort to combat the two headed monster of the Taliban resurgence and opium warlords who have doubled poppy production this year.

Can it get worse?

Osama bin Laden, America’s most wanted man, will not face capture in Pakistan if he agrees to lead a “peaceful life,” Pakistani officials tell ABC News.

The surprising announcement comes as Pakistani army officials announced they were pulling their troops out of the North Waziristan region as part of a “peace deal” with the Taliban.

If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden “would not be taken into custody,” Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, “as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen.”

This is what has most of the blogosphere wagging their tongues about this morning. But it important to remember that 1) No one knows where Bin Laden is; and 2) There is a better chance he is actually in Afghanistan than Pakistan although with this “peace agreement” that may change.

Bin Laden is the least of our worries right now. How to recover from this devastating blow - some might call it a betrayal - delivered by an erstwhile ally should be the focus of American policy makers as they scramble to assess what it all means and develop a counter strategy that will salvage something of our relationship with Musharraf as well as satisfy the Afghan government that must be going ballistic right about now.

Musharraf is scheduled to head for Kabul today for talks with Karazai. I will be very surprised if these meetings take place as scheduled and if they do - wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall when those two get together?

The agreement could add a new element of tension to Musharraf’s visit, aimed at smoothing over his relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The two Muslim leaders, both allies in the U.S.-led war against Islamic extremists, have clashed heatedly over allegations that Taliban forces in Afghanistan are receiving support and shelter from inside Pakistan.

Pakistan’s move also appeared to complicate the U.S. role in the region. U.S. officials have praised Musharraf for his help in capturing al-Qaeda members and refrained from pressing him hard on cross-border violence. A withdrawal of Pakistani forces could reduce pressure on al-Qaeda figures believed to be hiding in the region, including Osama bin Laden, allowing them more freedom of action.

What possessed Musharraf to make this Faustian bargain in the first place?

The death of a Baluchistan rebel leader may have roiled Musharraf’s government and endangered his hold on power to the point that he felt he had little choice:

ISI’s (Pakistan’s CIA-FBI agency) latest successful assignment was to locate Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, an aristocratic octogenarian tribal chief and leader of Baluchistan’s fourth insurgency in the last 70 years, this time to get a fair share of massive gas and mineral deposits. Government troops attacked the cave where this former Cabinet minister was hunkered down. An artillery shell buried him alive. ISI has yet to locate bin Laden, widely believed headquartered in Pakistan’s FATA, protected by fiercely loyal tribes that are clearly disinterested in a $25 million U.S. reward.

The Aug. 26 blunder sparked violent protests and shut down most of the country in a general strike to protest Bugti’s “assassination.” Even retired generals called on President-Gen. Pervez Musharraf to take the army out of politics and return Pakistan to civilian rule.

The Baluchistan rebellion predates the partition with India and has been marked by struggles to control the natural resources in the area as well as brutal suppression by the Pakistani government of the Baluchi tribal system and culture. The nearby province of North Waziristan also has restless tribal minorities who resent the control of the Pakistani government by the military, most of whose leaders hail from the country’s largest province of Punjab.

The death of the powerful Baluchi leader Bugti and subsequent nationwide unrest may have backed Musharraf into a corner with both his own military supporters and the shadowy elements of the ISI who created the Taliban in the first place. By making “peace” with the Taliban, Musharaf frees up several thousand Pakistani soldiers and quiets the rumblings of discontent coming from the ISI - a good move if one has a finely honed instinct for self preservation. And by proving that he’s flexible with one tribal headache, he may showing the Baluchis that talking to Islamabad is the best way to get what they want as opposed to continuing their rebellion.

This doesn’t explain Musharraf’s seeming diffidence toward the United States whose $2 billion a year in aid has been supplemented with generous loans from the IMF as well as debt reduction totaling more than $1 billion. The cutoff of US assistance to his military and economy would be a devastating blow to Musharraf’s rule and could cause him even more domestic problems. Is he taking a calculated risk that our anger at the Taliban deal will be tempered by the realization that he is the indispensable anti-terror man in the region?

Allies in the War on Terror are growing scarce. And our recent setbacks in Iraq as well as what some analysts see as a loss of American prestige and the myth of our invincibility may be contributing to Musharaf’s calculated risk in dealing with the Taliban. At the same time, Musharraf must realize he is still extremely valuable to our intelligence efforts in the War on Terror. His recent assistance in the British investigation of the liquid bomb plot in tipping off the Brits to some of the terrorists involved proves that we may not be able to get along without him.

So while we may express our extreme displeasure at Musharraf for this action, do not expect a reduction in aid or any other serious sanction against him. At the moment, he is still a powerful and valuable ally in the War on Terror and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

UPDATE

There is immense confusion over what this deal actually means. Is it with the Taliban? Or is it with tribal leaders who support the Taliban and al-Qaeda?

My take may be wildly off base here if what Ed Morrissey says is true:

However, it does appear that the two agreements add up to something other than an abject surrender. It seems more likely that Hamid Karzai would reject any such sanctuary for Taliban fighters, not embrace it and embrace Musharraf after allowing that to develop. After all, a free reign in Waziristan would allow the Islamists to gather their strength and attack in force. Karzai does not want Musharraf’s friendship so desperately that he would commit suicide for it, nor does Musharraf have any particular love of the radicals that have twice tried to assassinate him.

Musharraf wants to visit Karzai to put a coordinated plan for security in the cross-border region. That makes it look much more like Musharraf bought the cooperation of local tribes in an effort to flush out the foreign fighters exploiting the territory. That deal did include compensation — the region has a tradition of blood money — for lost relatives in earlier fighting. Musharraf wants the tribes out of the way so that the combined forces of Pakistan and Afghanistan — which means Pakistan and NATO — can attack the Taliban and their foreign terrorist supporters.

The problem with Ed’s otherwise excellent analysis is that it appears Karzai has been blindsided by the agreement, if the WaPo story can be believed:

The agreement could add a new element of tension to Musharraf’s visit, aimed at smoothing over his relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The two Muslim leaders, both allies in the U.S.-led war against Islamic extremists, have clashed heatedly over allegations that Taliban forces in Afghanistan are receiving support and shelter from inside Pakistan.

Pakistan’s move also appeared to complicate the U.S. role in the region. U.S. officials have praised Musharraf for his help in capturing al-Qaeda members and refrained from pressing him hard on cross-border violence. A withdrawal of Pakistani forces could reduce pressure on al-Qaeda figures believed to be hiding in the region, including Osama bin Laden, allowing them more freedom of action.

Stay tuned for updates on this story. As the dust settles, I’ll have further analysis.

Two examples today from different international bodies prove that those in the west who seek the shelter of law to justify both individual actions of self defense and national wars to ward off aggression are better off either groveling before their enemies and begging for mercy or simply committing suicide.

First, via the Claremont Institute, we discover that the UN General Assembly has decided to divorce itself entirely from natural law by taking away an individual’s right of self defense:

Glenn Reynolds alerts us to this U.N. Report which denies that there is such a thing as a right to self-defense in international law.

No international human right of self-defence is expressly set forth in the primary sources of international law: treaties, customary law, or general principles.

The second amendment implications are expertly dealt with by David Hardy:

I think the point is that the Special Rapper wants to class self-defense as something less than a “right” (i.e., as a manner of criminal defense) because if it were recognized as a “right” it would be something governments would be bound to guarantee — and that leads right to Prof. Glenn Harlan Reynold’s argument that a right to arms should be guaranteed as an international right. How could governments “guarantee” such a right (in the sense of doing something more than saying “you can plead this as a defense if prosecuted” — as might be expected the UN document treats “rights” as something more than “the government must leave you alone” — while outlawing the items a person needs to exercise that right? This leads to the anomaly that the report claims that the right to life is a “right,” but the right to keep from having your life taken is not. I suppose it equates to — you have a “right,” however unenforcable, to be protected by government, but not to defend yourself if it fails to do so. As might be expected from the source, the concept of “right” is rather ineptly socialist: rights are what you may ask the government to do for you. (And of course strongly of the legal positivist school: rights are not something that pre-exist government, and any official declaration of them, derived from a deity, morality, or man’s nature. Rather, in this view they are created by the document, or government, that acts to write them down. Created, as opposed to guaranteed).

Hardy nails this execrable piece of illogic to the church door. He points out the fundamental flaw in the direction that international law has been headed these past few years; the denial that there are independent of government a set of “natural laws” that are vitally necessary to the existence of human liberty.

This, of course, has been a foundational belief in American law and American life since the Declaration’s “self evident” truths completed the work of 17th century political philosophers like Hobbes and Locke. And as Samuelson points out in the Claremont post, the UN has divorced itself from this legal philosophy in order to adopt a much more capricious and arbitrary set of guidelines:

As Reynolds notes, David Hardy shows the pretzels of logic, or perhaps of illogic, that the U.N. needs to make in order to reach that conclusion. As he notes, the U.N.’s conception of law is simply positivistic, and hence divorced from nature. In other words, it is arbitrary ideology, not law.

[snip]

Of course, as I have noted before the U.N., has grown to be hostile to the natural rights foundation of the United States by its very nature. At the foundation of the U.N.’s understanding of law is an idea that is irreconcilable with the natural rights foundation of the U.S. Hence the U.N. does not grasp the necessity of a natural right to self-defense, a right of inestimable importance to us, and formidable only to those who would be tyrants.

And speaking of arbitrary ideology, Alan Dershowitz looks at Amnesty International’s report on the recently concluded Israeli-Hizbullah war and rails against its extraordinarily biased conclusions:

In fact, through restraint, Israel was able to minimize the number of civilian casualties in Lebanon, despite Hizbullah’s best efforts to embed itself in population centers and to use civilians as human shields. The total number of innocent Muslim civilians killed by Israeli weapons during a month of ferocious defensive warfare was a fraction of the number of innocent Muslims killed by other Muslims during that same period in Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Algeria, and other areas of Muslim-on-Muslim civil strife. Yet the deaths caused by Muslims received a fraction of the attention devoted to alleged Israeli “crimes.”

This lack of concern for Muslims by other Muslims - and the lack of focus by so-called human rights organizations on these deaths - is bigotry, pure and simple.

AMNESTY’S EVIDENCE that Israel’s attacks on infrastructure constitute war crimes comes from its own idiosyncratic interpretation of the already-vague word “disproportionate.” Unfortunately for Amnesty, no other country in any sort of armed conflict has ever adopted such a narrow definition of the term. Indeed, among the very first military objectives of most modern wars is precisely what Israel did: to disable portions of the opponent’s electrical grid and communication network, to destroy bridges and roads, and to do whatever else is necessary to interfere with those parts of the civilian infrastructure that supports the military capability of the enemy.

What does the report have to say about the gross violation of international law and the war crimes committed by Hizbullah when they fired 4,000 missiles into Israeli towns and villages with the sole purpose of killing as many civilians as possible:

THE MORE troubling aspect of Amnesty’s report is their inattention to Hizbullah. If Israel is guilty of war crimes for targeting civilian infrastructure, imagine how much greater is Hizbullah’s moral responsibility for targeting civilians! But Amnesty shows little interest in condemning the terrorist organization that started the conflict, indiscriminately killed both Israeli civilians (directly) and Lebanese civilians (by using them as human shields), and has announced its intention to kill Jews worldwide (already having started by blowing up the Jewish Community Center in Argentina.) Apparently Amnesty has no qualms about Hizbullah six-year war of attrition against Israel following Israel’s complete withdrawal from Southern Lebanon.

As has been widely reported, even al-Jazeera expressed surprise at the imbalance in the Amnesty report:

During the four week war Hizbullah fired 3,900 rockets at Israeli towns and cities with the aim of inflicting maximum civilian casualties.

The Israeli government says that 44 Israeli civilians were killed in the bombardments and 1,400 wounded.

AI has not issued a report accusing Hizbullah of war crimes.

In fact, AI specifically notes that they have no evidence that Hizbullah used Lebanese civilians as human shields to protect themselves from retaliatory attacks by the IDF. This blatant lie is only one indication of Amnesty International’s selective bias against Israel and its arbitrary application of international law. In fact, as Dershowitz points out, AI applies the law to the IDF in such a way as to make it impossible for Israel to legally defend itself:

Consider another example: “While the use of civilians to shield a combatant from attack is a war crime, under international humanitarian law such use does not release the opposing party from its obligations towards the protection of the civilian population.”

Well that’s certainly nice sounding. But what does it mean? What would Amnesty suggest a country do in the face of daily rocket attacks launched from civilian populations? Nothing, apparently. The clear implication of Amnesty’s arguments is that the only way Israel could have avoided committing “war crimes” would have been if it had taken only such military action that carried with it no risk to civilian shields - that is, to do absolutely nothing.

For Amnesty, “Israeli war crimes” are synonymous with “any military action whatsoever.”

This points up a philosphy that seems to have taken over Amnesty International as well as other international bodies with regards to the application of the law as it relates to western countries; you are always wrong and third world countries are always right.

Simplistic? Recent UN pronouncements on vital western freedoms like freedom of the press as well as Amnesty International’s recent comparison of Gitmo to the old Soviet Gulags continue a pattern that has been in motion for most of the last quarter century; hostility to western beliefs in freedom as well as a politicization of the law in order to achieve propaganda ends.

By bending over backward to appease third world peoples who suffered under western domination for most of the last 100 years, these international bodies are destroying the foundation of international law by divorcing it from its roots. Those roots are found in western thought about the nature of law and how it relates in the real world to people’s freedom. By substituting arbitrariness for logic and tradition, the UN and groups like AI risk overturning fundamental protections for all people.

This is too high a price to pay in order to pander to third world sensibilities.

“Hold fast to dreams. For if dreams die. Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly.”
(James Langston Hughes)

The resolution passed by the United Nations mandating a cease fire between Israel and the terrorists of Hizbullah was approved unanimously by the Lebanese cabinet yesterday with “reservations:”

Lebanon’s Cabinet late Saturday unanimously accepted the UN cease-fire plan to halt fighting between Israel and Hizbullah fighters, moving the deal a step closer to implementation, the prime minister said.

“It was a unanimous decision, with some reservations,” Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said in announcing Lebanon’s acceptance of the resolution after a four-hour Cabinet meeting.

Hizbullah’s Mohammed Fneish, minister of hydraulic resources, said the two Hizbullah members expressed reservations, particularly over an article in the resolution that “gives the impression that it exonerates Israel of responsibility for the crimes” and blames Hizbullah for the month-long war.

“We will deal with the requirements of the resolution with realism in a way that serves the national interest.”

Will they? Will Hizbullah “serve the national interest?” Or do they have something more sinister in mind?

“We believe that the resolution that was taken last night was unfair,” Nasrallah said. “But if there is an agreement on the cessation of hostilities between the Lebanese government and the enemy, we will observe it without delay.”

He said that Hizbullah would support any decision by the Lebanese government to end the war. “We will not be an obstacle to any decision that it finds appropriate, but our ministers will express reservations about articles that we consider unjust and unfair,” he said.

Nasrallah also expressed his support for plans to deploy Lebanese army and additional UNIFIL troops in southern Lebanon. “Regardless of our reservations and political positions, we will cooperate when the Lebanese soldiers and UNIFIL forces are deployed,” he said.

Nasrallah described the decision to dispatch Lebanese soldiers to the south of the country as an “achievement” for Hizbullah and Lebanon, saying it resulted from the steadfastness of the Lebanese people and the “heroes” of his organization.

Nasrallah is pushing himself away from the table and will be able to carry off most of his winnings thanks to the inexplicable timidity of the Israelis and the myopia of the Security Council. If his only reservation to the cease fire is that he is uncomfortable with the idea of being blamed for the war in the first place, he has indeed won a great triumph.

The question on the minds of most Lebanese today is what he will do with this victory. Nasrallah demonstrated by starting the conflict that he not the government controlled the destiny of Lebanon. Indeed, treating Prime Minister Siniora like an errand boy, a middleman in negotiations with the UN, the Hizbullah leader demonstrated that he had veto power over any and all decisions made by the Lebanese cabinet having to do with the cease fire.

He forbade the Prime Minister from accepting any cease fire that would have placed an independent foreign force on Lebanese soil, seeing quite rightly the potential that such a force could force him to accept the stipulations in Resolution 1559 that called for the disarmament of the terrorists and the loss of his autonomy in the south.

Instead, he got exactly what he wished for; an augmented UNIFIL force along with the Hizbullah-friendly and incompetent Lebanese army standing between he and Israel. Nasrallah correctly believes that such a force will not be able to keep him from returning to his bases in the south, much less “disarm” him in any meaningful way. In a few months, he will be able to marginalize this force as easily as he intimidated UNIFIL. At that point, his victory will be complete.

Meanwhile, Lebanon bleeds:

Lebanon today lies ravaged, its inhabitants suffering the consequences of Hezbollah’s hubris and Israel’s terrible, wanton retribution. Since July 12, when party militants abducted two Israeli soldiers and killed three on the Israeli side of the border, Lebanon has been under a virtually complete Israeli blockade. At the time of writing, nearly 1,000 people have been killed, mostly civilians. Predominantly Shiite areas in the south, Beirut’s southern suburbs and the northern Bekaa Valley have been turned into wastelands; Beirut seems empty. Businesses, when they do open, close early; store owners have cleared out their showrooms. The mood is one of ambient disintegration. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of refugees have moved into the capital, even as many of its residents have headed for the mountains. The economy, already precarious before the conflict started, lies in shambles, as does public confidence in the country’s future.

Michael Young is opinion editor at the Daily Star of Lebanon. His piece quoted above in the New York Times Magazine is an absolute must-read if you wish to understand the history of Hizbullah and the cultural and political reasons it plays such a large role in Lebanese society.

The post war situation in Lebanon looks bleak. Nasrallah ascendant, a massive rebuilding task facing the government, continued Syrian and Iranian meddling that led to the war in the first place, and the unthinkable prospect that once again the factions will take up arms and engage in a ruinous civil war.

The dream of a stable, prosperous, and free Lebanon embodied in the ideas of the “Cedar Revolution” are now shattered, its promises broken on the jagged shoals of cynicism and self interest. It is hard to see how the Lebanese democrats can retrieve the situation given the growing influence of Hizbullah in the councils of government. Because Nasrallah’s men still have their guns and with little or no prospect that anyone will be able to take them away, there is the real possibility that the Hizbullah leader will be able to hold the government hostage indefinitely.

Michael Young sees some signs for hope:

[The] starting point is the assumption that Lebanon really must be governed through mutual concessions and dialogue. Amid the general sectarianism, this may sound absurd. The ideal of Lebanon as a mosaic of separate but collaborating communities has been shattered so many times that it is difficult even to know what collaboration might mean. But it is also true that grounds for hope exist. Over the past half-century, the once-marginalized Shiites have steadily integrated themselves into Lebanese politics and society. While Shiites today largely accept Hezbollah’s claim to be their representative and protector, in the future new forms of Shiite politics and expression may emerge — must emerge.

Even before the war, the cynicism of factionalism reared its ugly head on more than one occasion. As far back as the parliamentary elections last year, Druse leader Walid Jumblatt actually aligned his party with several pro-Syrian politicians in order to counter the strength of Christian leader and former anti-Syrian Prime Minister Michel Aoun. This angered some of his allies in the revolution, especially in Saad Hariri’s Future Party. Aoun himself then showed how cynical politics in Lebanon could get by signing a Memorandum of Understanding with Hizbullah about disarmament discussions taking place only in the context of the National Dialogue, a roundtable of Lebanese leaders charged with solving the thorniest problems in Lebanese society.

Aoun allowed his personal ambition to be President to override both his natural anti-Syrian inclinations as well as common sense. Making common cause with Hizbullah - a group who wishes to establish Lebanon as an Iranian style theocracy - seems the height of stupidity for a Christian Maronite like Aoun. But when Lebanon’s parliament was constituted, Aoun found himself on the “outs” with the largest bloc of democratic reformers. By allying himself with the second largest bloc in parliament - the Hizbullah-Amal alliance - he found a vessel for his ambitions.

So in a sense, when the war came along, the leaders of the revolution had already failed in many respects to unite in a meaningful way in order to take on Hizbullah and re-establish Lebanese sovereignty over the entire country. They are now paying for their disunity and weakness. Michael Young explains:

Meanwhile, Siniora also had to handle relations with Hezbollah. Five of the ministers in his cabinet were Shiites, either members of Hezbollah and Amal or named by them. Members of the parliamentary majority affirmed their desire to see Hezbollah integrated into the armed forces and to see the state regain control over all the national territory — meaning Hezbollah must no longer rule over the border with Israel. But desiring Hezbollah’s disarmament was one thing; achieving it, another. When it came to such matters, the parliamentary majority was reluctant to act like a majority. Hariri was especially diffident, probably because his Saudi sponsors advised him to avoid precipitating any Sunni-Shiite showdown that might boomerang in the kingdom. But the chief obstacle, of course, was Hezbollah itself. The militia realized that without its weapons, it would lose its reason to exist as a militant movement, lose its élan and lose its value to Syria — as well as its ties to its main financier and advocate, Iran.

I have pointed out on numerous occasions that Nasrallah simply cannot afford to give up his guns. Without them, he is head of a minority party in a secular government, not a good jumping off position to precipitate his Islamic revolution.

With no one willing to disarm him, Nasrallah could be emboldened to strike back at the Christians, Druse, and Sunnis who heaped criticism on he and his group at the outset of hostilities with Israel. In an interview with al-Jazeera that went largely unnoticed in the west but which sent chills down the spines of several Lebanese politicians, Nasrallah threatened payback against those who didn’t support him:

As the violence continues, retribution is in the air. Israel has focused its attacks on Shiites, leaving Sunni, Christian and Druse areas (though not their long-term welfare) relatively intact. Amid all the destruction, many a representative of the March 14 movement has denounced Hezbollah’s ‘‘adventurism,’’ provoking Shiite resentment. As one Hezbollah combatant recently told The Guardian: ‘‘The real battle is after the end of this war. We will have to settle score with the Lebanese politicians. We also have the best security and intelligence apparatus in this country, and we can reach any of those people who are speaking against us now. Let’s finish with the Israelis, and then we will settle scores later.’’

This essentially repeated what Hassan Nasrallah told Al Jazeera in an interview broadcast a week after the conflict began: ‘‘If we succeed in achieving the victory . . . we will never forget all those who supported us at this stage. . . . As for those who sinned against us . . . those who made mistakes, those who let us down and those who conspired against us . . . this will be left for a day to settle accounts. We might be tolerant with them, and we might not.’’

It goes without saying that the assassination of Mr. Hariri, Mr. Jumblatt or other prominent politicians who opposed Nasrallah’s war could set off another round of sectarian blood letting:

Meanwhile, the country has sunk into deep depression, and countless Lebanese with the means to emigrate are thinking of doing so. The offspring of March 8 and March 14 are in the same boat, and yet still remain very much apart. The fault lines from the days of the Independence Intifada have hardened under Israel’s bombs. Given the present balance of forces, it is difficult to conceive of a resolution to the present fighting that would both satisfy the majority’s desire to disarm Hezbollah and satisfy Hezbollah’s resolve to defend Shiite gains and remain in the vanguard of the struggle against Israel. Something must give, and until the parliamentary majority and Hezbollah can reach a common vision of what Lebanon must become, the rot will set in further.

The continued powerlessness of the government in the face of Hizbullah’s brazen independence does not bode well for the future. And unless the sides are willing to fight it out once again in the streets, it seems unlikely that there will be any attempt to rein in Hizbullah and set a steady course for national reconciliation.

How far the politicians go to avoid a civil war will determine how much power Nasrallah will be able to exercise. And given the trauma the last conflict engendered, it would seem that the current government will go very far indeed before fighting the terrorists in their midst for control of the country.

One would think that losing by 200,000 votes in a presidential election would be considered enough of a margin to protect the democratic process from being hijacked by a bunch of thuggish street brawlers. Alas, Mexican moonbats, taking a page from their brethren to the north who believe any election they lose must be rigged, are urging people to take to the streets and force a result more to their liking:

Downtown Mexico City swelled Saturday with the accumulated frustration and rage of the poor, who were stoked into a sign-waving, fist-pumping frenzy by new fraud allegations that failed populist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador hopes will overturn the results of Mexico’s presidential election.

López Obrador ignited the smoldering emotions of his followers Saturday morning, alleging for the first time that Mexico’s electoral commission had rigged its computers before the July 2 election to ensure the half-percentage-point victory of Felipe Calderón, a champion of free trade. In a news conference before the rally, López Obrador called Calderón “an employee” of Mexico’s powerful upper classes and said a victory by his conservative opponent would be “morally impossible.”

Obrador has even less proof of computer rigging than our own moonbats had of Diebold tomfoolery during the 2004 election. In fact, the charge is completely made up out of whole cloth, a cynical attempt to manipulate the poor, the uneducated, and the resentful into pouring into the streets of Mexico City in order to intimidate and threaten the authorities into giving them what they couldn’t get at the ballot box.

These are the same tactics leftist bully boys have used for more than half a century. What you can’t win fair and square, try and steal. It worked in Eastern Europe with Soviet tanks to back them up. It remains to be seen whether the Mexican authorities can resist calls to throw the election laws to the four winds and, in the name of internal peace, simply hand the election to Obrador.

What Obrador has already done is delegitimize the election results in the eyes of about half the country. This despite election monitors from Europe giving the contest a clean bill of health:

Lopez Obrador called for protests across Mexico, saying last Sunday’s elections were more fraudulent than those held during 71 years of one-party rule. European Union election observers have said they had found no major irregularities.

While Obrador calls for a manual recount of every ballot, the Mexican law specifically forbids it except under extraordinary circumstances:

López Obrador wants a vote-by-vote count, which would require opening sealed vote packets from more than 130,000 polling stations. Electoral commission officials have sided with Calderón’s strategists, who argue that the law does not allow for the packets to be opened unless tally sheets attached to the packets appear to have been altered. López Obrador said that only 2,600 vote packets were opened Tuesday and Wednesday during a marathon official count, which shrank Calderón’s lead from 400,000 votes after a preliminary vote to 230,000.

Thousands of López Obrador’s supporters, many of whom had marched across the city for hours, chanted “Voto por voto, casilla por casilla” — vote by vote, polling place by polling place — as they streamed into the Zocalo on Saturday. Many entered the square waving the yellow flags of López Obrador’s Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD.

When has the law ever stopped the left from getting what they want anywhere in the world? It’s “justice” that matters in the end. And “justice” is always defined as the lefty coming out on top and to hell with the law.

The Washington Post’s Ronald Klain demonstrates a myopia that’s breathtaking:

For Lopez Obrador, the clock is ticking loudly. If he wants to keep his candidacy alive, he must take decisive — and quite divisive — action. He must bring meaningful and documented claims of fraud in the election. He must call his supporters to the streets and question the legitimacy of the vote casting and counting process. He must demand that, notwithstanding Mexican law, every ballot be recounted, by hand, to ensure an accurate tally. Above all, he must reject any suggestion that Calderòn received more votes — indeed, he must insist that any fair count would show that he is the rightful winner.

“Notwithstanding Mexican law?” Just who does this moonbat think he is, Al Gore? Actually, Klain wishes Gore had followed exactly this strategy in 2000:

This, of course, was not the playbook that Gore followed in 2000. The vice president rejected advice to do these things. Instead of claiming victory, he limited himself to suggesting that the result was in doubt — and unknown — until a “full and fair” count could be completed. He urged calm among his supporters and called off street protests by progressive groups and allies. He never, ever questioned the legitimacy of the institutions — the courts or the canvassers — responsible for the tallies, and he forbade his lawyers and operatives from doing anything of the sort.

Gore may have “forbade” his operatives from questioning the legitimacy of the process but that didn’t seem to have much affect as party activists worked overtime to pull every trick in the book to circumvent Florida election law. We saw in the Washington State governor’s race what happens when Democrats are allowed to “count every vote.” Washington state Dems were actually able to not only count votes cast on election day, but also votes that mysteriously turned up several weeks after the election following two state mandated recounts that were held prior to the discovery of the “lost” votes in heavily Democratic King county.

This is why there are laws and procedures on the books that should be followed during election challenges. There was no law or procedure in Florida that mandated the kind of recounts ordered by the Florida Supreme Court. That body - a Democratic majority seated - created law on the spot in order to supersede the elected legislature who had diligently passed enabling legislation for election recounts. This is what the US Supreme Court overturned - the imaginary law created out of whole cloth by the Florida court. And I suppose it a footnote in history, but a consortium of media outlets did a recount anyway and confirmed Bush’s victory.

Why Obrador wants to trod this path is obvious; he thinks that he can manipulate his supporters into threatening the Mexican government with riots and unrest unless they do as he bids. This without any evidence of the kind of massive vote fraud that would enable him to overtake the self-declared winner Felipe Calderón. Since he’s already convinced his peasant supporters that he was the victor and that the election was stolen from him, Felipe Calderón will have an extraordinarily difficult time governing the country over the next 6 years. This is bad news for America as the instability could lead to greater numbers of illegals trying to cross the border to find work. And if Obrador were to win, what his socialist, redistributive policies would do to the Mexican economy can only be guessed at.

It is thought that Obrador’s policies would engender a massive flight of capital from Mexico. This would mean slower economic growth which in turn would mean fewer jobs. With an unemployment rate already approaching 20%, that would mean even more illegals making their way north to keep their families from starving to death.

Either way you look at it, Mexico is in for a rough ride for the next few years.

I’m So Ronery
I’m so ronery
So ronery
So ronery and sadry arone

There’s no one
Just me onry
Sitting on my rittle throne
I work very hard and make up great prans
But nobody ristens, no one understands
Seems that no one takes me serirousry
(”I’m So Ronery” sung by the puppet Kim Jong Il from the film Team America: World Police)

I almost feel sorry for North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il. The poor bastard sits atop a country that is beyond being a basket case and probably beyond salvage. This from StrategyPage this morning from a piece entitled “Forget the Missiles, This is Even More Bizarre:”

While everyone’s attention was focused on North Korean missiles, the real story is the North Korean economy. It continues to fall apart, and more North Koreans are unhappy about that. Worse yet, more North Koreans are finding out how badly they have been screwed by their leaders. Meanwhile, North Korean officials engage in even more bizarre behavior. For example, food and fuel supplies sent to North Korea have been halted, not to force North Korea to stop missile tests or participate in peace talks, but to return the Chinese trains the aid was carried in on. In the last few weeks, the North Koreans have just kept the trains, sending the Chinese crews back across the border. North Korea just ignores Chinese demands that the trains be returned, and insists that the trains are part of the aid program. It’s no secret that North Korean railroad stock is falling apart, after decades of poor maintenance and not much new equipment. Stealing Chinese trains is a typical loony-tune North Korean solution to the problem.

Stealing Chinese trains? Stealing from the only country in the world willing to keep selling you food and fuel to keep your robotic, regimented population from either starving to death or rising en masse to throw your ass on the dustbin of history?

Kim gets away with stuff like this because he’s a loon, not in spite of it. No one, including the South Koreans, really know what the tyrant is up to which makes him not only dangerous, but unpredictable. And there is nothing in the world that makes bureaucrats, diplomats, and government types more nervous and confused than unpredictability. The North Korean leader just doesn’t fit into one of the nice, neat little boxes that the State Department uses to categorize world leaders. Even President Ahmadinejad of Iran is understandable in that it is obvious that his motivations are at least grounded in his religious beliefs. But there simply is no rhyme nor reason to some of Kim’s stratagems, not when he pulls stunts like stealing trains from his major benefactor and launching missiles when most of the world is asking him not to:

North Korea test-fired several missiles in the early hours of Wednesday, July 5 (Tuesday afternoon Eastern time), apparently including the Taepodong-2, the long-range missile at the heart of diplomatic tensions with the United States and its allies, according to reports by Reuters, The Associated Press, CNN and other agencies, citing sources in Japan and Washington.

The long-range missile seems to have malfunctioned less than a minute into its flight, CNN and Reuters reported, citing American officials they did not name.

“Today’s launches were done despite advance warning by the relevant countries,” the top spokesman for the Japanese government, Shinzo Abe, told reporters early Wednesday in Tokyo, Reuters reported. “This is a grave problem in terms of peace and stability, not only of Japan but also of international society,” Mr. Abe was quoted as saying. “We strongly protest against North Korea.”

It seems silly but one of his motivations for acting the way he does could be that Kim feels neglected. Every couple of months it seems, his government says or does something so outrageous that it is bound to get headlines in the western media. Like a spoiled 2 year old child, Kim goes into a foot stomping, head banging tantrum so that all eyes will be upon him, however briefly.

Take yesterday’s missile launches. According to intelligence, the North Korean’s launched a total of 6 missiles including a couple of Scuds and their intermediate range missile, the Rodong as well as their ICBM, the Taepodong 2. The ICBM, of course, was the cause of all the excitement given that some analysts believed it capable of hitting the extreme Northwest part of the United States. At the very least, it would have no trouble hitting Japan, a fact not lost on Tokyo who has called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council today to discuss the matter.

What to make of this? First of all, the timing of the launches cannot have been lost on the United States, coming as they did on the 4th of July. Kim probably thought this a huge joke, a pulling of the lion’s tail as it were. And I can just see the tyrant clapping his hands together in joy at the prospect of the largest nations in the world worrying their heads over him as they sit down at the UN today.

But secondly there’s that curious “failure” of the ICBM about 40 seconds after launch.The Taepodong 2 had a successful test in 1998, buzzing Japan by flying over Japanese territory for much of its flight. Now, I haven’t seen this speculation anywhere else, but it could be that the missile was deliberately destroyed by the North Koreans themselves. Why? Because by launching the missile and then destroying it, Kim proves a point without being too provocative. He pulls the lion’s tail without awakening the beast so that it turns and mauls him. Kim gets his headlines on America’s birthday while proving to the world he can defy the United States.

Again, this is pure speculation but given Kim’s monumental unpredictability, it’s just cuckoo enough to have a ring of truth to it. In the asylum he inhabits, Kim would see such a stratagem as a huge victory. And the more unpredictable he is, the more fear he generates in the rest of the world. It is that fear that Kim is counting on as he expects Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, and the US to try and buy him off by giving him enough aid to keep his country from sliding into total destitution and starvation.

High stakes, indeed. But if nothing else, Kim has shown a talent for survival. And in the game of international brinkmanship, the winner is usually the one determined to prevail at any cost.

UPDATE

Proving the old adage, “Nothing succeeds like success,” the North Koreans have launched a seventh missile, splashing it into the Sea of Japan like the others.

Ed Morrissey doesn’t think that this latest launch will make any difference at the UN today and I agree. What Kim wants he won’t get anytime soon - bilateral talks with the United States that would confer legitimacy on his regime and give him the respect he craves so desperately.

As the Israeli military moves decisively against their terrorist tormentors, some pundits are worried that the IDF incursions in to Gaza could precipitate a Middle Eastern war. Specifically, they point out that Syria may take advantage of the deployment of Israel’s defense forces and attack.

This is not in the cards - unless Baby Assad has totally gone off the deep end. Any attack begun by Assad’s admittedly larger but inferior forces will be finished by a qualitatively superior IDF in a matter of days. The only threat Syria poses is a surprise attack where they would have the initiative. But since the Israelis are on high alert and ready for him, Assad can do nothing but sit in his summer house and cower as Israeli jets buzz overhead. And the weak resistance of the Palestinians to the IDF thrust so far only shows that for all of their rhetoric and bluster, Hamas is an empty shell militarily.

The Jordanians? The Egyptians? Not a chance. Both those nations are too dependent on largess from the west to risk alienating Europe and America by initiating hostilities. The Lebanese are extremely angry but can’t muster much in the way of a military response given their domestic political situation. Hizbollah may end up tweaking the Israelis by firing a few rockets into the Jewish state but since they do this all the time, it won’t amount to much.

In short, the coalition of Arab states that went to war with Israel in 1967 and 1973 has changed dramatically. Only Syria remains as a real military threat to Israel. And Assad realizes that it would be a huge gamble going it alone against the IDF. A humiliating loss coupled with his retreat from Lebanon last year would convince the political and military elites in Syria that perhaps it was time for a change of leadership.

It appears that Hamas is discovering how stupid it is to pull on the lion’s tail and not expect a response:

An Israeli military official said a total of 64 Hamas officials were arrested in the early morning roundup. Of those, Palestinian officials said seven are ministers in Hamas’ 23-member Cabinet and 20 others are lawmakers in the 72-seat parliament.

Palestinian parliament speaker Abdel Aziz Duaik and Religious Affairs Minister Nayef Rajoub, brother of former West Bank strongman Jibril Rajoub of the rival Fatah party, were among those rounded up. There were conflicting reports about whether Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer, who has called for the release of Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit, was arrested.

Officials will be questioned and eventually indicted, the Israeli army and government officials said.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the ministers and lawmakers were not taken as bargaining chips for Shalit’s release, but because Israel holds Hamas responsible for attacks against it.

“The arrests of these Hamas officials … is part of a campaign against a terrorist organization that has escalated its war of terror against Israeli civilians,” Regev said.

There is some intelligent speculation that Hamas has engineered this crisis deliberately, that it seeks to discredit “moderate” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. There may be something to this speculation in that the incursion by the Israelis as a result of the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier (as well as the firing of about 800 rockets by terrorist groups associated with Hamas into Israel’s settlements over the last month) has discredited Abbas’ calls for dialogue with Prime Minister Ohlmert while strengthening the hand of the radicals:

Earlier, Israeli Public Security Minister Avi Dichter issued a direct threat to kill Hamas chiefs in Syria, the base of the movement’s political leader, Khaled Meshaal. He said Israel had issued warnings to Syria about the presence of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders in Damascus but that they were disregarded.

“This therefore gives Israel full permission to attack these assassins,” he argued.

An aide to Mahmoud Abbas said the Palestinian president called Assad to ask him to persuade Meshaal to help free the soldier. Assad promised to do so, but there have been no results, the aide said.

It is ironic that the Palestinians calling on their Arab neighbors for help in getting a “negotiated release” of captives in Israel in exchange for the young Israeli soldier followed so close on the heels of the IDF’s incursion. They were unwilling to release the young man prior to Israel’s military thrust which proves that the Jewish state knows exactly where to hit their enemies and make them howl. And the arrest of so many Hamas officials will serve to put the terrorists on notice that no one is immune when it comes to Israel’s determination to protect its citizens from the constant threat of attack from terrorists.

Once again, the Palestinians are proving that when it comes to trying to play hardball with the Israelis, they are simply out of their league.

Eleanor Roosevelt is turning over in her grave.

Mrs. Roosevelt chaired the first Human Rights Commission for the United Nations and was a strong influence in the writing and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one of the UN’s founding documents. Article 19 of that Declaration states:

Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

One would think that such a right would be self evident to everyone. Well…almost everyone:

“The prevailing practice of seeking to use the U.N. almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics is simply not sustainable,” said the deputy, Mark Malloch Brown. “You will lose the U.N. one way or another.”

In a highly unusual instance of a United Nations official singling out an individual country for criticism, Mr. Malloch Brown said that although the United States was constructively engaged with the United Nations in many areas, the American public was shielded from knowledge of that by Washington’s tolerance of what he called “too much unchecked U.N.-bashing and stereotyping.”

“Much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News,” he said.

Richard A. Grenell, the spokesman for John R. Bolton, the United States ambassador, said Mr. Bolton had not had time to read the speech to react to it fully on Tuesday evening. “Mr. Malloch Brown did not extend to us the courtesy of a copy of the speech,” Mr. Grenell said. “We need to read it and will certainly have to respond.”

(HT: Michelle Malkin)

Just how, praytell, would Mr. Brown wish the United States government to “check” what he calls “U.N.-bashing and stereotyping.”

Well, there are those Haliburton built concentration camps out in Utah that were constructed to hold liberal dissenters. Maybe we could round up a few UN bashers and send them to live with the Mormons.

As Godlstein points out, UN Ambassador Bolton’s mustache was twitching furiously at this bit of jaw dropping lunacy:

John Bolton’s straight-talking mustache, “Regis,” reacts to complaints by UN deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown that US criticism of the UN undermines the orgnanization’s mission:

Regis: “Yeah, whatever. Just so long as Brown remembers that when I pinch him on his ass, that means I want him to run and fetch me a sandwich and a Snapple. And none of that peach iced-tea sh*t like last time, either. Some of us still take our masculinity seriously.”

Meanwhile, the mustache’s other half was livid:

In a furious reaction, Bolton called the speech by UN chief Kofi Annnan’s deputy a “very grave mistake.”

“We are in the process of an enormous effort to achieve substantial reform at the United Nations,” he said. “To have the deputy secretary general criticize the United States in such a manner can only do great harm to the United nations.

“Even though the target of the speech was the United States, the victim, I fear, will be the United Nations,” he added. “Even worse was the condescending and patronizing tone about the American people. This was a criticism of the American people not the American government by an international civil servant.”

The US envoy to the UN said the only way “to mitigate the damage to the United Nations” was for Annan to “personally and publicly repudiate this speech at the earliest possible opportunity.”

How dare Mr. Bolton use such…such…UNDIPLOMATIC language! Doesn’t he know that the default position of the United States in these circumstances is bended knee subservience, mumbled apologia, and a promise not to let it happen again?

The UN is a vipers nest of vile anti-Americanism. Much of this has very little to do with our actual policies and more to do with pleasing the folks back home. What little good comes out of the United Nations - third world health issues, refugee assistance - is offset by its continuing irrelevancy in the face of true evil. The list is endless. The Balkans, Somalia, Congo, Darfur, and, its biggest failure in history, Rwanda.

As a supra-national aid agency, the UN functions just about as well as one would expect a gigantic bureaucracy could - just well enough not to allow too many people to die. But as an organization set up to keep the peace, negotiate disputes between member states, act as a watchdog to prevent rogue states from getting weapons that will kill millions - the UN is a total and complete failure, a danger to the continued existence of the United States and by extension, the western world. It should be downgraded considerably while regional security associations take on the task of peacekeeping. And as far as WMD, there has never been a state that sought them that failed to make them. With a record of abject failure like that, one would think that even a liberal would throw up their hands in disgust.

One would think that Brown’s remarks were approved by Kofi Annan. If not, Brown should be tossed from the top story of the UN building without a parachute. Or, failing that, Annan should fire his well-fed posterior and apologize profusely for suggesting that the United States government adopt the tactics of the dictators and thugs that the Secretary General likes to hobnob with on a regular basis.

Bolton has been working like a dog trying to reform some of the more egregious aspects of the UN. And he’s doing it the only way that the bureaucratic lickspittles at the UN can understand; by threatening to cut the purse strings:

The world body faces possible financial gridlock at the end of the month, when a 950-million dollar spending cap on a two-year 3.798 billion-dollar (3.2 billion-euro) UN budget agreed last December expires, if wealthy and developing countries fail to reach agreement on a package of management reforms proposed by Annan.

Washington has threatened to withdraw funding if the reforms are not adopted by then, and EU countries have said they will have to take another look at their contributions.

When even the Europeans might “take another look at their contributions,” you know that Bolton is dead serious about trying to reform the UN. And mostly what Bolton is proposing amounts to injecting a little accountability into the wildly unaccountable secretariat. No one knows how much money the SecGen spends to grease the wheels of diplomacy (and line the pockets of his friends and family). Getting a handle on that aspect of UN corruption would seem to be a good starting point.

Just when you think the United Nations couldn’t sink any lower in the estimation of rational, sober minded people everywhere they go and open an east coast affiliate of The Comedy Store smack dab in the middle of Turtle Bay.

Six nations with poor human rights records were among those elected to the new Human Rights Council on Tuesday, although notorious violators that had belonged to the predecessor Human Rights Commission did not succeed in winning places in the new group.

China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan, countries cited by human rights groups as not deserving membership, were among the 47 nations elected to the council. But in a move hailed by the same groups, both Iran and Venezuela failed to attract the needed votes.

Now I’m all for having a good laugh. But I think creating a showcase for low comedy at an ostensibly serious venue like the UN is just unconscionable. After all, the UN does very serious work. It takes a lot of time and effort to make a hash of all the hot spots around the world. I mean, how many hours of heroic effort went into thinking up the idea for UN Peacekeepers to get out of their Robin’s egg blue vehicles and drive around in pink Cadillacs, all the better to ply their trade as internationally sanctioned pimps?

Or what about playing footsie for more than a decade with a homicidal lunatic like Saddam Hussein? And whoever thought up the one about disguising Kofi Anan as an honest, effective, upstanding diplomat instead of the money grubbing, corrupt incompetent boob that he truly is deserves some kind of award - probably fashioned in the form of those oil for food leases so generously doled out by Saddam prior to his ouster?

And I also would like to take issue with the name of this new comedy club. “Human Rights Council” just doesn’t do it for me. There’s no pizazz, no sex in that moniker. Now if you were to call it “Fidel’s House of Laughs” or “Vladimir’s Basement Comedy Club and Torture Chamber” - that might pique my interest a little.

I’d also like to point out that there are a couple of others whose auditions were spectacular and didn’t make the final cut. I think an investigation is in order to find out why Mahmoud and Hugo were left off the final roster of performers. Should we blame this guy?

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said: “The good news is that we did better than expected in the voting because Iran and Venezuela both lost. Venezuela’s losing shows that bluster and anti-Americanism isn’t enough to get elected.”

Nations running for the council had to meet more demanding standards than in the past.

Actually, I kind of want to see old Kenneth get a shot at stand-up. That joke about why Mahmoud and Hugo lost because it “isn’t enough” to be an America hater is a real knee slapper. Isn’t it some kind of admission that even though it’s “not enough” to be anti-American, it sure as hell helps if you are? Jeeezuz!

As for those “more demanding standards,” I guess the world can live with them if the UN can. Then again, talking to democracy advocates in Azerbaijan to get their opinion of these new “standards” may prove difficult because if they’re not rotting in some jail where visits from nice, clean, neat UN bureaucratic toadies are frowned upon as much as the inmate’s supposed “crimes,” then they’re in a graveyard which would make asking their opinion of anything problematic to say the least.

The UN is not a place for serious people. And anyone who proposes that the United States in any way curtail its efforts to stand up for what it believes to be its national interests just so that this corrupt gang of lying, weaselly, kleptocratic hypocrites won’t wag their fingers at us and tell us how beastly we are deserves either electoral oblivion or the scorn and outrage of their fellow citizens.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin has lots ‘o’ links and stuff including this from an reader:

China, Russia, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia. what else do you notice? Both Russia and Saudi Arabia’s heads of states have been to GW’s Crawford Ranch (though i dont recall if President Bush also held hands and smooched Putin), an honor bestowed on few world leaders. Pakistan’s Musharraf is routinely praised by Bush despite his non-democratic/military government. probably has his own room in the White House. And China, well with the latest criticism of Taiwan, Bush’s kisisng up to the Asian giant needs no further explaining.

The reader goes on to say that we have no right to criticize the UN since we cozy up to these thugs.

I’m one who actually thought that Bush’s second inaugural speech where he talked about a change in American policy toward the dictators and thugs who run countries that are allied to us, was one of the most decent impulses in American foreign policy since the end of World War II. The fact that his Administration has failed miserably to turn that talk into action is one of the great disappointments many of us on the right feel toward the President.

Still, the criticism of the new members on the Council is valid. The United States government is not the UN Human Rights Council. If the UN were serious about promoting human rights, they would place representatives on that Council that were actually in favor of the general idea. As it is, the best representatives for all of those countries named above are in jail or executed. The government boot lickers who we will get as representatives instead deserve our scorn and disapprobation.

Ed Morrissey ties in the Human Rights Council idiocy with “ethical standards” for businesses:

If the farcical selection of the guardians of human rights doesn’t make people laugh out loud at Turtle Bay, then its new push for “moral investment” will. The UN has drawn up a set of principles for businesses to model if they want to have the moral imprimatur of the UN with which to attract investors. It sounds reasonable in principle, but as a result, entire industries get locked out of the UN’s good graces.

It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out which industries Ed is talking about.

A.M. Mora y Leon also has a superior take on the choices for the new Council.

Quick! For God’s Sake! Someone check and see if employees for the voting machine manufacturer Diebold have been ANYWHERE NEAR ITALY IN THE PAST 6 MONTHS!

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi overtook former European Commission President Romano Prodi in Italian elections and now leads in voting for both houses of parliament, projected results showed. The final outcome is too close to call.

Berlusconi had a narrow advantage of 0.3 percentage point in voting for the Chamber of Deputies that would give him 340 seats in the 630-seat house, projections based on a partial count of votes showed. Berlusconi’s coalition also held a narrow majority in the Senate.

Initial exit polls showed Prodi winning the Chamber and a 20-seat majority in the Senate. Italians voted using a new proportional voting system similar to the one that produced 52 governments in 48 years until it was abandoned in 1994.

Official counting of the votes continues. With a third of the votes for the Chamber counted, that tally gives Prodi a lead over Berlusconi with 52 percent to 47 percent.

Oh! The humanity of it! Don’t these Repuglithicans have any shame at all? It’s all an eerie episode of deja vu - the first blush of victory for the moonbats in Italy as exit polls show a sweeping victory for the left:

Bad news for Berlusconi: according to the first exit poll, Prodi’s center-left leads 54 - 49 percent over Berlusconi’s center-right at the Chamber of Representatives. At the Senate, the situation is the same. But, consider that this is the first of many exit polls. Much can change.

As we all know, EXIT POLLS ARE NEVER, NEVER, EVER, EVER, WRONG!! Which means, there’s only one possible explanation in all the universe for this…this…this…perfidious turn of events.

Gotta be Diebold.

How low can ChimpyMcBushyhitler sink? And has anyone seen Karl Rove lately? This has got Rove’s pawprints all over it. It’s a Rovian operation, top to bottom I say!

I demand a recount…at least one. And by all that is good and holy, we will keep counting and recounting until by God the results come out the true way, the correct way, the way ordained by the Great God Gaia.

If I were those Italian commies, I’d start warming up the lawyers in the bullpen, getting ‘em ready to jump into court the minute the vote is official. It worked like a charm for our Democratic party here. Of course, they didn’t win. But by saying the election was stolen, no one will ever be able to say it was your loony ideas, crappy candidates, piss poor planning, and stupid strategy that was responsible for your loss.

And at the very least, it will make you feel better, right?

UPDATE

For a little more serious take on the Italian elections, see Chad Evan’s excellent stuff at In the Bullpen.

Also, PJ Media will be updating results all night as they come in courtesy of Stefania Lapenna.

UPDATE II

It appears that Italy will have a split government with the PM slot going to Prodi by virtue of a razor thin win in the lower house.

Actually, what my lefty trolls seem not to understand (no surprise - I wrote this piece in English, not moonbatese) is I wasn’t necessarily cheering on Berlusconi as much as I was pointing to exit polls that showed Prodi’s center-left coalition winning by at least 7 points. Obviously, this didn’t happen which gives the lie to liberal cants after the 2004 election that the contest simply MUST have been fixed because of the skewed exit polls.

And for the commenter who mentioned the Washington State governors race, almost to a blog, conservatives in the sphere urged the Republican to concede after the first re-count. This despite the laughably fallacious move by King County Dems to count 2500 votes that they suddently “found” 2 days after the election.

There’s the difference. After the 2004 election, liberal blogs like Kos and Americablog were not only calling for a recount in Ohio despite a margin of victory by Bush that was twice what state law called for, but also that Diebold hacked voting machines and gave votes to Bush that were actually cast for Kerry.

Sore losing has become a staple of the Democrats in national elections. I wonder what margin of victory in 2008, if any, will be enough to prevent Dems from screaming “cheater” like 5 year old little girls?

There has been a debate in Britain these last few years over whether or not the “special relationship” that has existed for more than 100 years between England and the United States has any real advantages in a post-cold war world. Some of Great Britain’s best thinkers on the left feel that the country’s close identification with the United States has not only been inimical to Britain’s need to integrate their economy, currency, and domestic policies into the greater European whole but also that the Anglo-American alliance has actually made England less safe, largely as a result of what they see as the Bush Administration’s aggressive policies in fighting terror and the War in Iraq.

This “anti-Americanism by default” position is shared by a broad spectrum of the left including Old Labour, Liberal Democrats, and even many of New Labour’s social democrats. In fact, it could fairly be said that only the dominant personality of Tony Blair has kept the “special relationship” intact and as strong as ever over the last 3 years despite enormous domestic political pressures on the PM to pull back from his steadfast support of President Bush and carve out a more independent road in foreign policy.

There have been few British Prime Ministers since the end of World War II who have been as loyal a friend to the United States and supportive of its interests as Tony Blair. At great personal and political cost, he has continued the deployment of British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan while deflecting charges that he is President Bush’s “lapdog.” For Blair’s part, his actions are hardly altruistic nor are they based on the kind of close, personal connection with Bush as was enjoyed by Lady Thatcher with President Reagan. Those two twentieth century titans bonded at an emotional level rare for leaders of great nations. Blair and Bush on the other hand seem to have developed an excellent working relationship based on trust and and genuine friendship. This has held both in good stead as the progress in Iraq and Afghanistan has proved to be fitful and at times, ephemeral.

In truth, while Bush could be considered the “senior partner” in the alliance, it is Blair who has often given the best defense of the coalition’s decision to go to war in Iraq and stay until the job of securing democracy is achieved. Where Bush’s speeches can sometimes be dry recitations of progress made in securing and rebuilding the country with clear, logical justifications for going to war, Blair’s talks always seem to strike just the right rhetorical notes of Churchillian denunciations of evil and a Thatcheresque optimism about the future that seems to elevate the cause to the level of a crusade.

And Blair has also spoken forcefully about the importance of the Anglo-American alliance to the future of not only Europe but the rest of the world as well. He has consistently warned against the unreasoning anti-Americanism that threatens to turn the world away from the United States at a critical juncture in world history.

Speaking before the Australian parliament yesterday, Blair issued a rhetorical slap to those in Europe and around the world whose casual hatred of the United States threatens the future of the world on a wide variety of issues:

“I do not always agree with the United States - sometimes they can be difficult friends to have,” he said.

“But the strain of frankly anti-American feeling in parts of European and world politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in,” he said.

[...]

“The danger with America today is not that they are too much involved, the danger is that they decide to pull up the drawbridge and disengage. We need them involved. We want them engaged,” he said.

“The reality is that none of the problems that press in on us can be resolved or even contemplated without them. Our task is to ensure that with them we do not limit this agenda to security.”

Blair’s warnings are directed toward his European counterparts who too often use the rhetoric of anti-Americanism as a cheap way to garner votes. Blair’s point - that this attitude does damage to the domestic political consensus in America for international engagement - is spot on. The strain of isolationism, never far below the surface in American politics, could re-emerge with a vengeance in either 2006 or, more likely, 2008 as voters in the United States react to the virulent anti-American rhetoric of France, Germany, and others with a “to hell with them” attitude and turn their attentions to concerns more domestic in nature.

Blair’s recognition of this danger is one of the reasons he is the indispensable man in the alliance of English speaking nations that includes Australia’s John Howard. Blair’s longevity has earned him respect around the world as he has been a leading spokesman for taking action on global warming as well as issues as diverse as third world debt relief and nuclear non-proliferation. But since his announcement that he plans to leave before the end of his third term in 2010, the questions about what will become of this alliance once he is gone have occupied the State Department and our military planners.

The prospect of Blair’s resignation coming sooner rather than later was given a boost last November when the Prime Minister’s comprehensive anti-terrorism bill went down to an ignominious defeat. Oddsmakers put his staying in office past 2006 at 5-2 against although Blair himself has recently said that he regrets saying that he would stand down before the next election. But the clock is definitely ticking on the Tony Blair era and the implications for the alliance are already being assessed.

As a practical matter and for the sake of his party, Blair will have to decide within the next 2 years when he should exit the stage. That’s because he will want to give his almost certain successor Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown time to get settled into 10 Downing Street before the election in 2010. So the question is, what kind of fellow is this Gordon Brown and how will the ascension of this life-long left wing activist affect the “special relationship” between England and America?

First, it should be noted that Blair has taken steps to tie Chancellor Brown more firmly to his policies by making him the front man in Parliament on a variety of issues. While it is whispered that Brown resents this role somewhat, he sees this kind of loyalty as his ticket to the top. But how the Chancellor would deal with America is the real question and for that, it may be helpful to examine his background for clues.

Asked during the General Election of 2005 what Britain would look like under a Brown Premiership, the Chancellor replied ‘more like America’. Brown is a passionate Americanist, having studied economics at MIT and regularly vacationing on the East Coast. American business practice is held in reverence by him. A consistent theme has emerged in Brown’s key economic speeches; he wants the British and European economy to become more like the United States. More competitive, entrepreneurial and dynamic, but combining free-market capitalism with social justice. The Chancellor’s first foray into foreign policy, last autumn, with a EU/G8 trip to Palestine, gives us an insight of Brown’s approach to international policy. Brown intends to bring his economic expertise to the aid of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, by attempting to reduce the poverty and unemployment experienced by Palestinians, which makes them ripe for transforming into Jihadists.

Mr. Brown has been a staunch supporter of the Iraq War and has praised America’s ‘courageous leadership’ in the fight against Islamist terrorism. There has never been a hint from his camp that he would have done things differently, and on several tense occasions when Mr. Blair has been under fire over Iraq, Mr. Brown has intervened to offer his backing.

Clearly, Brown is positioned to maintain British commitments in Iraq and elsewhere for the near future which is good news. What is unknown is how resistant Mr. Brown will be to calls from his own party to reduce those commitments the closer to 2010 we get. It seems probable that a large troop presence will be absolutely necessary beyond 2008 and perhaps even beyond 2010 although it is doubtful that the domestic political situation in either Great Britain or the United States would allow for that kind of commitment. What is more likely is that Brown’s Labour party will be forced by electoral necessity to drastically reduce England’s commitment of troops in Iraq prior to the election even if events on the ground do not warrant it.

There is hope that those events on the ground will begin to turn in the coalition’s favor as more and more Iraqi troops and police demonstrate competence in dealing with the insurgency and domestic unrest. This may allow for more than token drawdowns of forces even before 2008 which would be good news for both Brown and Republicans here in the United States. But at present, with sectarian violence simmering at high levels and threatening to burst out into full scale street fighting, there is little talk of reducing the presence of coalition troops.

Which brings us back to Mr. Blair. While Chancellor Brown will continue his policies, the question always asked when evaluating this “special relationship” between the two great nations is how well do the two leaders get on personally? Brown was accused in the past of being something of a cold fish with a single minded determination to become Prime Minister that rubbed many of his colleagues the wrong way. But he appears to have softened considerably since his marriage in 2000 at the age of 49 to his longtime sweetheart Sarah MacCauley and then the tragic loss of his 10 day old child in 2002. He has since settled into a happy domestic situation with his 3 year old son John and wife which most observers agree has done wonders for his public face.

It appears that Brown would probably be personally comfortable with either a Democrat or Republican in the White House given his admiration for Republican free market principles and his commitment to Democratic social justice issues. How that would translate into forging a working relationship on the alliance’s continuing efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere is the mystery. Much depends on how the situation in Iraq resolves itself over the next 2 years. A bad outcome there could make both countries pull back from engaging other nations in the region like Egypt and Saudi Arabia in building more free and open societies. And in the background, looming ever more dangerous, is the specter of Iran and its quest for nuclear weapons. It is hard to imagine that the alliance would not agree that Iran cannot be allowed a nuclear option. For that reason, American-British cooperation there will be of paramount importance.

I have a feeling that once he is gone from the scene, we will greatly miss Tony Blair’s clarity of thought on the War in Iraq as well as his personal commitment to maintaining the “special relationship” that Great Britain and America have enjoyed for so long. He has left his mark on all of us and I personally will be saddened to see him go.