Radical Liberals Condemn and Disparage Technocrats

The following exchange took place between an American radical liberal and me on the appointment of the two technocrats Mario Monti and Lucas Papademos as prime ministers of Italy and Greece.

Bruce Wilder says,

You seem to have lost the essential premise: the “looming economic catastrophe” is largely the creation of the technocrats, and “all the misery that implies” has been embraced by the technocrats with all the enthusiasm an 18th century physician had for purgatives and bleeding.

Con George-Kotzabasis says,

Bruce Wilder, your “essential premise” walks on crutches. In a physical crisis in which you might lose your leg you don’t stop from going to a surgeon just because there are bad surgeons about. To label all surgeons (technocrats) as incompetent and refuse to go under their knife is to lose your leg. That is why your argument, factually and intellectually, waddles on crutches.

Bruce Wilder says, 11.13.11 at 6:09 pm

Con George-Kotzabasis @ 105

If your life was threatened by a growing cancer, affecting your lungs or your kidneys, and you went to a surgeon, and the surgeon said, “To save your cancer, I recommend amputation of your leg,” I would hope you would run from the room, with your legs still intact.

These particular neo-liberal technocrats are just these sorts of mad incompetents, prescribing senseless maiming in place of a treatment plan. There are, apparently, no politicians available, to stand up and veto the insanity, “brave” and “charismatic” or otherwise.

The corruption and incompetence of the politicians—indeed, the whole polity—in Greece and Italy—played nearly as critical a part in the epidemiology of crisis as the neoliberal technocrats. It is worth remembering that the popular support for the European project has often rested on the hope of improving the quality of governance and institutions. For all the grousing over the minutiae of Brussels and the trivia of Strasbourg, the hope of European Union was always to promote high-minded, principled liberal institutions as a prophylaxis against authoritarianism and populist corruption. This was, I suspect, always a very big part of the appeal of the euro: German monetary policy for the South, an internationally respected currency immune to runaway inflations, etc. The Italians, as I recall, embraced the euro ahead of every other country; they were overjoyed to be rid of the lira, the joke currency of Europe, so inflated in value that coins were impractical—phone booths required a special token and street vendors gave candies in place of change. The euro is very popular in Greece as well, and I suspect that that popularity, as much as the fecklessness of politicians, is a factor in preventing Greece from taking the obvious step of unilaterally embracing default in abandonment of the euro. (Purely from a technocratic point-of-view, the equivalent of a competent surgeon would be a technocrat doing the preparations in secret, which would make a unilateral return to the drachma feasible. That’s the “right” thing to do for Greece, from a “technical” standpoint and from the standpoint of protecting Greece from the “amputation” of privatisation and a prolonged deflation. An efficient calculating machine would have been crystal clear from the outset that, on the numbers alone, Greek default was inevitable; delay could only prolong and intensify the suffering.)

The Big Picture, here, may well be that economic and institutional centralization has found its limits, at least for the moment. Certainly, the neoliberal architectural principles employed over the last 25 years are a bust. Are we so stupid that neofascism must follow? Many would say that authoritarianism was always an implied part of the neoliberal agenda.

110

Con George-Kotzabasis 11.14.11 at 2:10 am

Bruce Wilder
In serious discussion it is wise to enter it carrying a sieve in one’s hands to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Your crystal clear “efficient calculating machine” that would implement your proposal of default, would be no other than a wise, brave, imaginative, and humane TECHNOCRAT. So what exactly you have against technocrats? They are OK if they adopt your plan and only transported to Hades in toto for their mortal sins, if they don’t! Default was and is always an option. The distinguished economist Deepak Lal and exponent of the Austrian School of economics, long ago suggested such a schema. Lucas Papademos and Mario Monti both presumably have this option in their arsenal to be used as a last resort if everything else fails. But before they use this ‘nuclear’ option, they must try, and be given the right by all objective analysts and commentators, to resolve this economic crisis by ‘conventional’ means that could avoid a default which would open a big hole in their countries GDP and throw their people into pauperization for decades to come.

111

Bruce Wilder says, 11.14.11 at 2:37 am

Instead of “support the troops”, we are now asked to support the neo-liberal technocrats.

Con George-Kotzabasis, are we to take no account of the part the technocrats played in “designing” the euro? Are we to take no account of the failure of the ECB to carry out bank supervision or to regulate derivatives? It is a little late in the progress of neoliberal disaster capitalism to be attributing good faith, let alone expertise, to these bozos.

The Periclean Dimensions of Antonis Samaras as the Future Prime Minister of Greece

By Con George-Kotzabasis—December 10, 2011

We have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring. Pericles

In the present storm-laden dark sky of Greece, a glittering new star has made its appearance which like a beacon of the sky is attempting to navigate the battered ship of Greece into calmer waters and save it from shipwreck. This new star is the leader of the Opposition of the New Democracy Party, Antonis Samaras, who since he has become its leader two years ago, has displayed unprecedented qualities of leadership and economic and political insight and daring, in this critical economic situation that Greece traverses, that only a statesman of Periclean dimensions could exhibit.

The criticism of Samaras from early on as leader of the Opposition of the Papandreou government, which he has depicted as amateurish and inept, has been totally justified. His early warnings that the policies of the socialist government of Papandreou were wrong and the torrent of taxes that the latter rained upon the middle classes would be disastrous for the economy. In October 2009, when Papandreou began his premiership, public debt was 298 billion euros, 125% of GDP. Today it has reached the whopping amount of 360 billion euros, 165% of GDP. Gross National Product in 2009 was 238 billion and presently has shrunk to 218 billion. According to OECD estimates it will decrease even more by 6% in the near future and unemployment will increase to 18.55%, affecting tragically younger people.

Further, Samaras predicted that the first EU Memorandum that imposed draconian austerity measures on Greece would neither decrease the budget nor would it put the economy on a track of recovery. As an economist he cogently argued that in conditions of deep recession austerity measures would exacerbate the economic crisis not dampen it. He was severely criticized and reprimanded when the New Democracy Party voted in parliament against the extreme austerity measures. Moreover, he had the moral strength and political insight not to be tempted to fall to the seductive calls of Papandreou to participate in a unity government to deal with the national crisis. Samaras gave as his strong reasons that since the PASOK Government was refusing to change its economic policies, that followed the blueprint formulated in the European Memorandum without attempting to modify it in certain crucial parts that could deter the further weakening of the economy, and which had failed the country, he, and his party, would not take part in a coalition government merely for the purpose of being an “accomplice” to these flagrantly wrong policies.

Samaras made a series of proposals that he encapsulated in his “Restart of Greece” by which the country could avoid the shoals that would cause its economic sinking. Last May in his Zappeio II Proposal the Leader of the Opposition presented a number of policies that could put Greece on the road of economic recovery and its corollary, the ability to pay off its debts. His restart programme would necessitate a “shock treatment” but with positive results. (a) A severe cut in public spending and on pensions, only above the level 700 euros. (b) A reduction of taxes on household income and businesses and a decrease in VAT in all sectors of the economy particularly in tourism which is pivotal to the Greek economy. (c) The abolition of all means test for the acquisition of a house and on capital repatriation so to inject money in the financial system. (d) The legalization of all buildings constructed without permits-there are more than a million-which will bring substantial increases in state revenue. (e) The state is to pay off all its debts to private individuals thus increasing market liquidity. And banks to commit to the real economy 20% to 30% of the guarantees they receive. This will further increase liquidity in the market and be an incentive to stop capital flight. (f) The state must not make any cuts to the Public Investment Programme with its high multiplier effect that is a powerful instrument to combat recession. (g) The acceleration of denationalization of public owned entities, which the Papandreou government was slow to implement, and the stimulation of the development of property which is the economic engine of the country. All these relief measures will increase state revenue and the Restart programme will balance the budget within just over three years, and start paying off Greece’s debt.

This daring Restart programme is not an abstraction and Samaras is quite aware that to concretize it he has to convince the lenders of Greece, i.e. the EU, of the urgent necessity of making changes to the present economic policies that clearly have failed, if the goals of the Memorandum of 26^th of October, to which he is irrevocably committed, are to be achieved. This task of convincing Greece’s European partners of a change in tack has been eased, as High German officials admit now that the initial programme was wrong.

Finally, Samaras warns (not exactly in the following words) that this contagion that is threatening to engulf the European continent is not only economic and political but also social, and could lead to an explosion of European Spring protests that could not be contained and could transform radically the political landscape of the continent by the reappearance of the infernal star of the swastika in the political constellation of Europe.

But History has shown repeatedly nations at moments of great dangers, produce great and illustrious leaders that saves them at the eleventh hour from destruction and obliteration. From Themistocles to Charles Martel to Winston Churchill, the invasions of barbarians and dictators were defeated by the sagacity, imagination, and moral strength of exceptional leadership. Antonis Samaras from his words and deeds without any doubt belongs to this lineage of leadership. Greece facing the abyss of economic bankruptcy, poverty, and mob rule with the dangers that are historically inherent in such combination, i.e. the resurgence of fascism, has a unique leader in Antonis Samaras that could prevent this stupendous threat from consummating which would consign the country into the doleful state of penury and into the captivity of dictatorial regimes.            

In Greece Political Midgets on High Wire Act

By Con George-Kotzabasis—November 02, 2011-11-02

Political midgets, a la Papandreou, have chosen to take the risk of the high wire act by this proposal of the referendum. Hoping that the people will vote for the lesser of two evils, i.e., accepting the debt deal as formulated in Brussels last week and rejecting default and departure from the euro zone. At a time when strong leadership is a prerequisite for diminishing the crisis that Greece is facing, Papandreou abdicates his own and passes it to the people through this future referendum. It’s as if the polloi had somehow a better knowledge and understanding of the critical dimensions of the economic situation and could provide a better solution to the crisis than the expertise of the economically and politically savvy.

Once again politicians, who are more concerned of holding power than of the future of their own country, are ready to prostrate themselves before and pay homage to the idol of the Demos. Papandreou facing in Parliament a no-confidence vote and the ousting of his government promptly announced a referendum that would decide the future of the country, hoping that this would allay the anger and opposition of the people against the austerity measures, imposed by the EU, and at the same time put an end to the disarray within his own government that itself stems from the revolt of the people. It’s clever politicking to avoid defeat and save for him the prime ministership. But he is doing this at the expense of the future well being of the country, as it would take years for Greece to recover from the shock of a default if the electorate voted for it, which is highly likely. This is no less than the revisiting of the ‘sinful’ genius of his pere who himself was the preeminent progenitor of the economic ills that Greece is presently plagued with. The fils merely continues , like father like son, the ‘sins’ of his sire in a more acute form and projects them into the future.

World Bank president, Robert Zoellick said that “if voters reject the plan, it’s going to be a mess.” Economists claim that the immediate effects of a default would probably be a 20 percent to 30 percent drop in domestic demand and a fall of 5 to 10 percent of domestic product. Evangelos Venizelos, the Finance Minister, and his deputy broke ranks and opposed the referendum, saying it would jeopardize Greek membership in the euro zone. Ilias Nicolakopoulos, professor of political science and close to the governing socialist party, stated that a “referendum would put the country in danger of blowing everything up.” In contrast, Henry Ergas writing in The Australian, on November 3, 2011, “Greek Vote a Banana Republic Moment,” praises Papandreou for having the “balls” to propose the referendum, and compares him to the gutsy warning of Paul Keating’s “Banana Republic.” He says, that “to call a referendum on the austerity program is hardly irrational. But he adds the caveat, “true, it is a gamble, and a risky one.” Nonetheless, “the best hope of what comes next must lie in securing a genuine popular mandate.”

Regrettably, however, Papandreou’s proposal of a referendum does not rise from his “balls” but from his impotence. Unable to lead and convince the country, as a weak leader, to accept the inevitable “scenario, Greece must face a lengthy period of austerity and structural reform,” Papandreou passes this leadership to the impassioned people to decide whether to accept or not this scenario. Professor Ergas’ quote of Sophocles, “truth is always the strongest argument,” though generally accurate, is misplaced in the context of a long corrupt electorate that the fiscal profligacy of past governments accustomed it to indulge in ‘free suntans’ in sunny Greece. In such circumstances, the only truth that this pampered electorate will accept is the continuation of these free suntans at public expense. And that is why they will vote NO to austerity measures and thus turn the referendum into an ogre for the future economy of Greece.

Fortunately the proposed referendum like the balloon it was fizzled out within twenty four hours. Under external and internal pressure Papandreou reneged his proposal and withdrew it. Tonight (November 4, 2011), he places his fate on the lap of the god, parliament, on a confidence vote. Even if he survives by the smallest margin his prime ministership is foreclosed. 

I rest on my oars: your turn now...    

American Liberals Scared by their Own Made Ghosts

By Con George-Kotzabasis

“Scariest stories ever written about contemporary America” is the story that makes some of the political toddlers of America to run and cover themselves under their bed sheets. Sans political wisdom, sans political and historical insight, and hence, sans cognitive and intellectual legitimacy, they attempt to analyse the world shaking event of 9/11 and the Administration’s protagonists’ response to the crescent shaped  bolt that appeared over the blue sky of America with their childish fears. And for fear to be effective it must have its bogey ghosts. So we have Cheney, Addington, and Bolton wrapped up with white sheets in the middle of the night scaring the bejeesus out of the liberal intelligentsia with their nefarious schemes of “a massive expansion of presidential power” starting an “illegitimate war,” creating “a system for spying on American citizens...sanctioned torture”, and “pushed official secrecy to unprecedented levels.” The critics of Cheney, Addington, and Bolton never learning the abc and never reaching the omega of statecraft are shocked to see, and it’s beyond their comprehension, that in moments of national crises the expansion and concentration of presidential power is the sine qua non of strong political leadership and a necessary but temporary measure to protect a nation from malicious lethal enemies, both external and internal.

All the above measures that Clemons highlights were instigated by the Vice President solely for the protection of America. It was an unenviable task and it could only be performed by the strong in character. One must not forget that in hard times only the hard men/women prevail. And Cheney, Addington, and Bolton will be panoramic figures in American history for their political and strategic insight, strength of character, and their indefatigable efforts to shield the United States and the West from the fanatical irreconcilable enemies of Islam.

Who are the Real Culprits of the Oslo Massacre?

By Con George-Kotzabasis


Enoch Powell’s prophesy in his “Rivers of Blood” speech delivered in Birmingham in 1968, was to occur by the “cunning of history,” if not by its ‘revenge’, forty-three years later in the peaceful and highly cultured country of Norway to the shock of all people who had not taken seriously the premonition of that outstanding conservative British politician. Powell had early on seen that the ‘progressive’ immigration policies that were artificially breathed-in on the political landscape of the UK by a hybrid breed of Labor and Conservative governments, would not take long before they changed into dragons teeth that in turn would spawn homicidal ‘armed camps’ between indigenous and migrant populations of Britain. The first phase of Powell’s dire prediction had already happened when the children of immigrants transformed themselves into Islamic homegrown terrorists, and detonated bombs aboard London Underground trains on 7 July 2005, killing and wounding hundreds of people—and the currently burning of Britain by the offspring of migrants is directly correlated to the same inconceivably foolish and ill-advised immigration policies of the past--as well as one year earlier in the Madrid train bombings by Moroccan Islamic homegrown terrorists. And as we all witnessed, the second phase, the indigenous reaction to those fatal immigration policies, occurred in the cultured polished country of Henrik Ibsen by the murderous action of a ‘Viking Warrior’, Anders Behring Breivik, who took it in his hands, as his long Manifesto makes clear, to close the doors to Muslim immigration in Norway, and to prevent the future domination of Europe by Muslims. These actions were not the actions of a madman, but the actions fed and bred by a mad immigration policy that was implemented over a number of years by so called humanitarian and caring social democratic governments toward Third World countries in Scandinavia, Norway being the first victim of that policy that was to be put in the government made straitjacket.


For inevitably, that bizarrely naïve immigration policies adopted by a number of economically developed European countries, and ‘escorted’ by that beautiful debutante of multiculturalism, would divide the countries politically and severely between left and right, as it is being illustrated presently and pellucidly in many parts of Europe. With such political and cultural polarization in Europe and within the context of the external and internal mortal threat that Islamic barbaric fanaticism poses to Western civilization, as well as the economic crisis of the Euro zone, not to expect that fringes of the extreme right would not be prone to commit atrocities, could only be assumed by those who like ostriches have their heads buried in the sand. The Breivik killings could only shock the historically ignorant and the incorrigibly naïve. And, indeed, it may turn out to be a dress rehearsal for other European countries that are likewise divided on the issue of immigration and multiculturalism and the internal threat of Islamization. The former PM Tony Blair in an interview he gave in his last visit to Australia sees the Oslo atrocities as an extreme reaction to the “Islamization of Europe.” (M.E.) The liberal internationalists who dub those who believe that this threat is real as “Islamophobes,” are fugitives from reality and are totally incapable of composing a narrative of reason on the issue. Were those like Winston Churchill, after the Anschluss of Austria by the Nazis in 1938, who were convinced that the latter posed a real threat to Europe and to the peace of the world, ‘Naziphobes’? And can one likewise disregard the profound cogitations of great thinkers, like the Islamist scholar Bernard Lewis, who forewarns that Europe by the end of the century by the dint of demographics, will be Islamized?


Here lies the cause of the Oslo massacre. And European governments who are becoming conscious and aware that these ill-conceived immigration policies of the past and present are rallying their own people to take direct action against these policies and against congenitally unassimilated Muslims who are lazily teeming the cities of Europe as a result of these doltish policies, must bring the latter to an end. Moreover, many Muslims willingly become ‘secularly’ unemployed-to use the term in its economic meaning-and of the underclass, since their preference is to be welfare dependent. And the safety net of welfare, especially the one that applies to families, is a honeyed incentive for Muslims to have big families, which is in accord with their religion, as the more children they have the bigger the payments of welfare. Hence, ‘working’ and sweating in the conjugal bed is a pleasurable source of ‘windfall’ income.


We see therefore, that the demographic change of Europe, of which a sizeable part of its population is Muslim, is fostered not only by religious factors, i.e., Muslim polygamy, but also by economic factors. i.e. the exploitation and milking of the welfare system by the true believers of Mohammed. This unholy wedlock of religion with economic sleaze provocatively raises the ire of the majority of the indigenous population who as tax payers are footing the bill, and who are terrified that future generations of Europeans would be living under Sharia laws. It’s these factors that agitate Europeans and induce them to support political parties that are committed to put a stop to Muslim immigration, to enact radical reforms to the welfare system that presently is a big tit that feeds Muslim procreation, and to engender the conditions for Muslim integration to European mores by ceasing to subsidize Muslim schools and Mosques. It’s only by hardening the political and social landscape of Europe for Muslims that governments can prevent their citizens from taking extreme measures to reverse the past deeply flawed immigration policies that are responsible for such extreme and atrocious actions as perpetrated in this case by Anders Behring Breivik.

I rest on my oars: your turn now…

How U.S. Missed Opportunity to Defeat Insurgency in Iraq in its Early Stage

By Con George-Kotzabasis 

 The following was written on August 23, 2003 and is an extract from my book, Unveiling The War Against Terror, published in Melbourne on May 9, 2004. under the title How to Legitimize the Interim Government in Iraq and How to Trap Terrorists. It's republished here for the purpose of higlighting the serious errors committed by the Bush administration in the initial stages of the occupation of Iraq. But despite these errors I was unshakable in my belief that the U.S. would defeat the insurgents as presently is happening under the generalship of Petraeus.

As events have shown, the Americans implemented at the beginning of 2004 two of the proposals below--though not quick enough and not in the form I suggested in regards to the second, i.e., the formation of an elite National Guard--(a) the establishment of the Interim Government and (b) the arming of Iraqis. But to my surprise and chagrin, they did not implement the core of my plan, i.e., to make Iraqis the owners of oil (They did this too late, under Article 108 of the Constitution of Iraq, voted by Iraqis in 2005, "Oil and gas are the ownership of all the people of Iraq in all regions", without however making them direct equity holders and paying them dividends in advance, as I had suggested), that in my opinion if they had done so (a) would have prevented the insurgency and (b) would have captured or killed the foreign jihadists.


Paradoxically, it could be Iraq, allied with the American Coalition Forces, that would be instrumental to the defeat of global Islamist terror. By the capture or killing of a substantial number of Jihadists who, at the end of the major combat operations against Saddam Hussein, were able to infiltrate into Iraq, with the aim to fight and destroy the American infidel occupier, with the help of local remnants of Saddam's supporters and Islamist fundamentalists. It's for this reason of the utmost importance, that the Coalition Forces do not prevent the infiltration of terrorists into Iraq, from neighbor muslim countries, as the distinguished war historian John Keegan suggests in one of his recent articles, but, on the contrary, facilitate their entry into the country and trap them.

The set up of this trap will be accomplished by two imaginative strategic moves, as will be explained below, with which the American led-coalition in alliance with the future Interim Government of Iraq and its military forces, would achieve its three major political and military objectives. First, the formation of a legitimate democratic government in Iraq. Secondly, the substantial defeat of global terrorism. And thirdly, the quick withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq. Hence, the Bush administration at one fell swoop would succeed in keeping the promises it made to the American people and to the world at large, about the establishment of a democratic government in Iraq, and about the war against global terror.

The two-pronged stratagem will involve the following: The first one will entail the hastening of the formation of an Interim Government ( IG ) in Iraq by its present Governing Council. At its formation, the IG will make the following historical announcement to the Iraqi people. That the latter will be equity holders in the major wealth of the country, i.e., its oil production. Each Iraqi household will be a recipient of an annual dividend from the profits of oil. That this is not a promise for the future but a real offer, will be exemplified by the immediate payment of the dividend to each Iraqi household, whose amount will be assessed from the flow of oil profits issuing from future sales. This advanced payment will be funded either by a newly-established financial institution of the UN, or of the IMF or the World Bank.

The equity of the Iraqi people in the major resource of the country will effectively demonstrate the bona fides of the IG to Iraqis, and will immediately confer unassailable legitimacy to it. It will blot out all internal initial opposition to the IG as being a quisling governing body of the Americans, as well as take the wind off the sails of all the jaded "unembedded" commentators, who claim that the US invaded Iraq for its oil. In the same announcement, the IG will inform the Iraqi people of the formation of an elite National Guard, whose objective, among others, will be the safeguarding and protection of this national property of the people from any incendiary acts of sabotage against its producing facilities perpetrated by either external or internal enemies of Iraq.

The Americans will have nothing to fear from the formation of the National Guard. As the latter will be mainly enlisted from former members of the Republican Guard, who were nurtured on secular principles, and whose loyalty to Saddam arose only from the fact of their elite status given to them by the latter. Moreover, the members of this elite overwhelmingly have enormous respect of American military power, and of the personnel manning that power. Therefore, as an elite corps, they will be proud to serve as equals with their American counterparts, in defense of Iraq's national interests.

The second prong of the stratagem will be a proclamation made by the IG to the Iraqi people (And this act will sound the clap of the trap that will catch the Jihadist terrorists en masse.) The proclamation will be made in the following terms: That any one who harbors, aids, and supports Iraqi and foreign guerrillas will be considered to be an enemy of the State and of the Iraqi people. And will be dealt with the ultimate punishment, as that to be meted out to the terrorist guerrillas. At the same time, the IG will issue an order, not only to the National Guard and the adjunct security forces of the country, but, also, to its Coalition allies in Iraq, to commence a relentless punitive campaign against the guerrillas and those who harbor and support them, and pluck them out of the soil of Iraq, root and branch. This order of the IG will bestow legality to the actions of the American led-coalition already taken against urban guerrillas, as they will be seen by Iraqis to have the imprimatur of their Government. Furthermore, that the American Command Centre and its ground forces will be abiding to, and executing, this order of the Iraqi Government, will have a tremendous psychological impact upon the Iraqi people. Because of the primary status that pride has in Arab culture, this will be a proud moment for all Iraqis.

This order of the IG, will accomplish two strategic tasks. First, it will make a strong impression on the Iraqi people, that the American led-coalition are not an occupier of their country, but a defender of their interests. Secondly, and more importantly, the fear that will instil on people in Iraq who aid and support guerrillas ( this time fear will be on the side of a good cause, unlike Saddam's fear ), that they will be treated as traitors and hence punished accordingly, will induce them to stop sheltering the guerrillas and abandon them. Once the terrorists are abandoned, by their current and would-be supporters, they will be consigned to the "furies" of their fate. As they will be forced to operate "in no man's land" , where they would be easily captured or killed by the National Guard and the Coalition forces.

This trap sprang on the Jihadist terrorists will be a devastating blow on global terrorism. It will demoralize active and would-be terrorists on such an immence scale with the outcome of drying up the well from which fundmentalist mullahs get their deadly recruits. And providing these mullahs are severely dealt with by the Coalition against global terror, wherever they happen to be, in the East or in the West, the black veil of death will enshroud the heads of terror. The Bush administration's total war against global terror, not only will be justified, but it will also be a glorious total victory against it, morally, politically, and historically.

The above is an extract from my book Unveiling The War Against Terror written on August 23, 2003. My proposal was sent to the White House on the same date.

Will Greece Default and Leave the Eurozone?

By Con George-Kotzabasis

In any crisis of serious proportions consensus between the major political parties is the sine qua non for its resolution. This certainly applies presently in Greece. But the dimensions of the crisis are so Gulliverian that only a titanic struggle of will and resolution by its politicians, guided by wisdom, will at least diminish the scale of the crisis. Regrettably, however, there is a dearth of politicians in Greece of the status of Gulliver and an abundance of Lilliputians. Therefore, a different consensus is materializing among eminent economists, that Greece perforce will have to traverse a different course than that imposed by the ECB and IMF.

Deepak Lal, a former president of the Mont Pelerine Society and a prominent exponent of the Austrian school of economics, predicts a Greek default and an exit from the Euro. To avoid a Greek debt default that would lead to a Eurozone banking crisis, a stabilization program has been imposed on Greece by the ECB and IMF. But unlike other similar stabilization programs, Lal argues, two vital elements are missing: a large devaluation and a restructuring of the country’s debt. “The former is precluded by the fixed exchange rate of the Euro, the latter by the external holdings of Greek sovereign debt by European banks.” The alternative program therefore is to impose a large internal devaluation instigating a precipitous fall in domestic wages and prices through a massive deflation. It is impossible however to believe that Greek politics will allow the country to follow such a course, especially when Greece is likely to be left with a debt-GDP ratio of 150%. Hence, Deepak Lal predicts that a Greek default and an exit from the Euro is the most likely path that Greece will follow.

High Court's Decision:Triumph of Legal Activism at the Cost of Australia

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shovelling smoke. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

The High Court’s decision that the Gillard Government’s deportation of asylum seekers to Malaysia is unlawful is a devastating blow to Labour’s immigration policy and a lethal hit on Australian border protection. It’s ostensibly clear that a majority of the honourable justices of the court are not immune to the deadly pestilential virus of legal activism whose source has been a number of admirable but impractical human rights enactments by the United Nations  which can only be implemented by the abrogation of the national sovereignty of nations. But in the context of judicial activism the immigration policy of Labour would stand its trial before judges who already had the sentence of death in their pockets. The majority of the justices argued that Malaysia not being a signatory of the UN Convention to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol is not legally obliged to protect refugees and therefore is not a suitable country to deport refugees. Moreover, according to refugee advocate Julian Burnside, QC, the justices reminded the government that “Australia is signatory to a number of human rights conventions” and is legally bound to abide by them. However, “Commonwealth Solicitor–General Stephen Gageler argued that the government could lawfully declare Malaysia a safe third country even though it had no domestic nor international legal obligations to protect asylum seekers.” But while lawyers may ‘shovel smoke’ at each other on this issue, the repercussions of the High Court’s decision on immigration policy and border protection are of a serious nature and may cause great harm to Australia.

Zabiullah Ahmadi, an Afghan who lives in Kuala Lumpur, predicts than “within weeks there will be lots of boats...many people have been waiting to see this decision.” Hence, the High Court’s decision will encourage asylum seekers to risk their lives in unseaworthy boats with the hope of reaching the shores of Australia which to many of them, in the context of this decision, has become the refugees nirvana. Another refugee observer, Abdul Rahma, a leader of the Rohingga Community in Malaysia, said, the “Australia-Malaysia deal has been a useful bulwark to stop the tide of asylum seekers risking their lives travelling to Australia. Now they would return to the boats.” With the great probability therefore of an increase in boat smuggling and the attached physical and psychological risks that asylum seekers will have to take, the judges of the High Court have unwittingly, and must I add, foolishly, become accessories before the fact of this great danger to the lives of refugees on board of unseaworthy vessels. Furthermore, the honourable justices by ‘signing on’ the UN Convention on refugees, they have written off the long term interests of Australia in regard to its immigration policy that is of such paramount importance to its future balanced demographic mix. A mix that will not threaten its Western based values and the harmony of its democratic society  as it has on many European countries due to an unwise and completely flawed immigration policy that so acrimoniously and precariously has divided the indigenous population and immigrants, as exemplified by the massacre in Norway and the riots in the cities of Britain.

But one must be reminded that the decision of the High Court is a direct outcome of the foolish dismantling by the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of the successful “Pacific Solution” of Howard’s government that in fact had stopped the refugee boats coming to the shores of Australia. And the serially incompetent and politically effete Julia Gillard who succeeded him to the Lodge had to pick up this can of worms, i.e., this confused new Labour policy that was kicked by Rudd to his successor with his ousting from the Lodge.

In the context of the decision of the High Court the Gillard government has no alternative other than to change by legislation the immigration laws. And it is good to see that in this task to protect the borders of Australia, the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has stated that the Liberal/National Coalition would support such legislation if the Government would consider Nauru as an offshore refugee centre. It is imperative that this offshore solution must not be replaced by the cretinous stupid proposal of the Greens and their sundry ‘paramours’ of human rights lawyers and refugee advocates that asylum seekers should be held in onshore centres such as on Christmas Island. Such a short sighted harebrained proposal would lead to a stampede of smuggler’s boats hitting the shores of Australia and would be an incentive for ruffians of all kinds to continue entering in greater numbers such a lucrative business.

Finally, the High Court’s decision is a portentous illustration of what is in store for nations who injudiciously and facilely sign international conventions without considering the serious and injurious repercussions such covenants could have on national sovereignty. No wise political leadership would be ‘outsourcing’ the sovereignty of one’s nation.  

I rest on my oars: your turn now...               

Obama's Angelic Doctrine Disarms Evil Foes

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Reply to: The Mellow Doctrine by Roger Cohen

global.nytimes.com May 03, 2009

Roger Cohen riding his high horse as a columnist of The New York Times trots a ‘neighing’ argument that throws the rider on the paddock. He claims and infers that the new policies of President Obama in foreign affairs, which he frames in his term of The Mellow Doctrine, are holistic remedies for the wanton malicious inflicted maladies that the Bush-Cheney administration had placed upon the body politic of America that had alienated it in the minds and hearts of so many people in the world.

These policies now are spreading and reverberating across Latin America, Europe, and Asia Minor and are creating an echoing melodious sound of Europeans, Turks and Latinos--with only a slight discordant hoarse bass note coming through the nostrils of an old dog, Fidel Castro, who can smell in Obama another imperialist rat. In Strasbourg the French and Germans loved to hear the President expostulating on the new fully cooperative conduct of the U.S. with its major allies, the French seeing him as an exemplar of their own past mission civilisatrice in the sphere of diplomacy, and the Germans as a second Ich bin ein Berliner, after John F. Kennedy. In Prague, the multi-cultured Czechs were delighted to hear him say that he was “committing the United States to a world without nuclear weapons,” and his outpouring of a profusion of mea culpa of America’s past misdeeds and the arrogance of imperial powers and its leaders, who like Roosevelt and Churchill would determine the fate of peoples “sitting in the room with a brandy.” In Turkey, the most modern of Muslim nations thanks to its insightful great Soldier-Statesman Kemal Ataturk, the Turks were regaled to see Obama parading before them his own partial Muslim origins and hear him say that Muslims had been treated with “insufficient respect” in the past. And in Trinidad and Tobago, where the Fifth Summit of the Americas was held, Obama enraptured the Latinos to such a degree that even the spirited anti-American warriors Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez were won over, the latter being moved so much so that he gave as a gift to Obama a book on American imperialism and the latter reciprocating to Hugo’s generous gesture by giving him a warm handshake and a friendly touch on the shoulder.

To Cohen, all the above related events are a clear sign that “Foes...have been disarmed by Barack Obama’s no-drama diplomacy.” Obama’s “mellow doctrine...finding strength through unconventional means: acknowledgement of the limits of American power; frankness about U.S. failings; careful listening; fear reduction; adroit deployment of the wide appeal of brand Barack Hussein Obama; and jujitsu engagement.” If the above quotes are not a perfect illustration that Obama made a confession of American weakness before the ‘priesthood’ of his ‘Catholic’ enemies, then one will ever search in vain for  a definition of weakness in any dictionary. And to bring jujitsu in this bout of weakness as a saving line is like offering someone who already lies unconscious on the floor from the blows of his opponent the Japanese art of training the mind and body in unarmed combat. In this context for Cohen to mock Dick Cheney for saying that America’s enemies perceive “a weak president,” is to brand himself with his own mockery.

This confession of weakness is the ‘Eighteenth of Brumaire of Barack Hussein Obama,’ to paraphrase Karl Marx on Louis Bonaparte, an intellectual coup d’état by   the constitutional lawyer against the constitution of the political wisdom of the ages in whose preamble imprescriptibly is written that to show and admit weakness before one’s enemies is the cardinal unforgiveable political sin. As in any human contest only when a party is weakened is prepared to make concessions whereas the strong seek and drive home their victory. This applies more so to fanatically religious enemies who have an ineradicable tendency to see, due to their irrational cogitations, any conciliatory initiative of their opponents as an admission of weakness.

But the intellectual fragility of Cohen’s argument is exposed by his use of the weakest enemies of America, that is, the Castro brothers and Hugo Chavez, and surprisingly Turkey, which has not been an enemy of the U.S., to drive home the success of the conciliatory attitude of President Obama. In the case of Turkey, he claims that at the NATO meeting the Turks dropped their opposition to the nomination of Denmark’s Anders Rasmussen as the alliance’s secretary general because of “Obama’s conciliatory message to Muslims.” In contrast, the previous administration by “humiliating Muslims” filled the schools of Waziristan and Ramadi with recruits for future terror. When one asks whence this humiliation of Muslims started the unutterable answer of Cohen must be since 9/11. The undeniably harsh but necessary measures that the Bush administration took against Muslim terrorists to protect its citizens from, at the time, imponderable future attacks, were in the eyes of Cohen measures that “humiliated Muslims.” Just as well columnists of this sort are ‘unsheathing’ their pens to write their columns instead of unsheathing their paper swords to protect Americans.  

Most of all Cohen is apparently very fond of the following by President Obama. “Resistance” to a set of U.S. policies “may turn out to be based on old preconceptions or ideological dogmas” of the previous administration, and “when they are cleared away ...we can actually solve a problem.” So President Obama with a broom in his hand once he sweeps this ideological debris of the Bush administration he will be able to start solving the innumerable problems that America is facing. But the fact is that the United States is not countenancing these problems because of “old preconceptions or ideological dogmas,” but because of its status as the sole superpower is inevitably burdened to carry like Atlas all the world’s crises and hot spots on its back and to set up actions that are not always agreeable by the rest of the world that would have a chance to resolve these crises. And inevitably because of the multiple actions it has to take in so many complex parts of the world it cannot jump over the shadow of fallibility. The alternative, to restrict its engagement with the rest of the world because of its immense risks and possible errors of judgment, is not the raison d’être of great power. Moreover, a disengagement from the hot spots of the world would allow sinister and brutal fanatical leaders to take over countries and oppress their peoples as well as endanger the stability of the world.

The political naivety and immaturity of President Obama is encapsulated in his own terms in regard to Iran: Normal relations can be restored on the “mutual respect” of opponents. This would be forsooth the reality if your opponent considered you to be negotiating from a strong position. It would not be true if his estimate was that his opponent was negotiating from a weak position contra his own strong position. The strong can be at times kind, gracious, and helpful toward the weak but never have any respect for the weak. This is more so in the hard realm of geopolitics. The Iranian theocracy will see any diplomatic initiatives by the United States as an admittance of political feebleness by the latter and will exploit this to their advantage. And by the time when President Obama will become aware of this the Iranians will be already close to the entrance of the nuclear club. No angelic or mellow doctrine of Obama will disarm America’s implacable irreconcilable foes. Only the thunder, and as last resort the bolt of Jupiter, can defeat these deadly enemies.  

Hic Rhodus hic Salta

      

How to Mobilize the Tribal Chiefs of Afghanistan against the Taliban

By Con George-Kotzabasis

There is a great possibility of replicating the Surge in Afghanistan with the following economic-political-military strategy: To shift the estuary of the stream of revenue from narcotics from the Taliban’s and narco-lords’ mouths to the government mouth with the aim to feed the hungry mouths of the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan. That is, to nationalize the poppy industry and make the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan the direct equity holders of the income that accrues from the production of opium. Such a policy will create a powerful self-interest and lead to a Tribal Chief’s awakening that will be more widespread and potent than the Iraqi one, since it will mobilize the whole country, through its tribal chiefs, against the Taliban and the narco-lords.

Thus U.S. forces will not have to go to a wild goose chase of serendipity to get “their lucky break.”

This idea was floated by me in a paper of mine on October 2008.

Muslims Credulous to Conspiracy Cranks and Dangerous to Western Civilization

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The power of religion in indigent societies is more potent and influential upon its believers than political power or military power, especially in Muslim societies where religious and political power are inseparable and is exercised by theocracies. And as the author correctly states the believers of Mohammed are credulous and vulnerable to the most fictional conspiracies and tend to scapegoat others for their own ills and those of their countries. It’s this unshakable belief in the evil of others, in this case of the West in general and of the American Satan in particular, that makes Muslims extremely dangerous to Western civilization.

Euthanasia of the Presidency Under Obama

By Con George-Kotzabasis

President Obama is placing the vibrant presidency of the most powerful nation in the world in the hands of the practitioners of euthanasia as if America were in the agony of its death throes. Cynical about America’s global political and military power, cynical about its ability to win the war against its deadly and irreconcilable enemy, cynical about its peoples’ steadfastness and determination to wage war against the fanatical hordes of Islam that threaten America’s heartland, cynical of its European allies’ resolution--under indomitable and sagacious US leadership--to fight the same war, and cynical of the capacity of the best professionally trained armed forces in the world, i.e., the American, to defeat an impromptu organized group of terrorists, who bereft of cool strategic nous in comparison to its ‘infidel’ opponents, are impulsively fighting the Great Satan and all the other little Satans of  the West  with the fanatical cry of Allahu Akbar,  President Obama has chosen, due to this inveterate cynicism and to his guileful and odious politics as we shall  see further down, most imprudently strategically and politically and sans amour propre to retreat from the battlefield, with macabre geopolitical consequences for America’s prestige as a superpower, and take cover behind a no longer fortress America.

As we predicted early in 2009, during the long gestation of the president’s ‘new strategy’ for Afghanistan which under the pretence of giving serious consideration to the request of his senior commander in Afghanistan General McChrystal to increase the troops by 40,000, he dithered his decision not however for the purpose of how to win the war but for the purpose of weighing the political costs that would accrue to him if he had accepted the advice of his general. And when finally he made his decision, he increased the troops by 30,000 while handing to his National Security team a memo setting the strict terms that this increase included the July 2011 start date for a US troop withdrawal. Hence, Obama as Commander-in-Chief, whilst his brave soldiers and astute generals were spilling their blood in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan fighting the Taliban with the aim of defeating them, all he was thinking about were the political costs that would bear upon him as a result of his apparent greater involvement in the unpopular war. So Obama’s ‘serious’ and long deliberations before he made his decision had nothing to do with a new strategy, emanating from his status as Commander-in-Chief, to defeat the Taliban but had everything to do with his status as political shyster who was only concerned about his polls.

The increase of troops by 30,000 was strategically meaningless as it had not the aim of defeating the enemy since it merely served Obama’s political rationale of not seeming to be weak on war while at the same time placating the anti-war crowd by announcing the withdrawal of all US forces from Afghanistan. What strategist of any substance would increase his forces in the field of battle only to withdraw them without inflicting upon his enemy a mortal blow? And what kind of leader would place an increased number of his soldiers in danger and continue a war that he thinks is unwinnable when his main purpose was to withdraw them from such war, why would he have increased them in the first place if he was planning to withdraw them if not for his concealed ill-design to dupe the American people, to present himself as both a war president and a peaceful one? In reality of course, Obama is neither of these but a political Shylock who demands his pound of flesh from his troops fighting in Afghanistan in order to play his despicable politics at home so he can placate both those Americans who support the war and those who are against it.

From Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Charles Martel, to Napoleon all strategies had a clear and unique goal, to defeat the foe. Only President Obama, who as the most repulsive of political manipulators is wantonly sacrificing the interests of the nation to his own narrow political interests, is disgracefully and timorously traducing this irreversible principle of war and turning himself into a cartoonist mockery as Commander-in-Chief of a great nation.

Afghanistan during Obama’s political campaign was a “war of necessity,” that presumably was neglected by President Bush, and a war that must be won. But according to Bob Woodward’s new book titled Obama’s Wars, this is no longer so. Obama is quoted as saying, “This needs to be a plan about how we are going to handed it off and get out of Afghanistan.” And the outcome of the policy review and its long deliberations was the offspring of “political considerations,” according to a State Department official. Obama himself reportedly said to Senator Lindsey Graham, “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party” on the issue of Afghanistan. General Petraeus felt so affronted by White House demands for an exit strategy at all costs that he told his aids, “They are f...king with the wrong guy.” Another senior general said that the announcement of the withdrawal by President Obama, gave “sustenance to the Taliban.” Moreover, the policy review has engendered serious divisions within the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Council, and the Defense Department and between American and Afghan officials. Jim Jones, the National Security adviser, calls the ‘bosom’ advisers of Obama, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel variously as the “mafia” the “campaign set” and the “politburo.” And General Petraeus has dubbed Axelrod as the spin artist in residence, and I would add the spin-master who can win elections and lose wars. 

These revelations of Bob Woodward are toxic to Obama’s presidency and threaten to unleash a spate of resignations of top echelons of the Administration. In short, the presidency at this critical moment of national security and war is in a state of disarray. And no matter how he is going to re-arrange the musical chairs of his sinking presidency after losing the better performers, the future ones that will occupy them will be the worst performers that he could get. No one of sterling qualities, of the best and the brightest, will have an inkling to join an intellectually, politically, morally, and strategically bankrupt administration and be branded everlastingly with such an ignominiously failed presidency. Obama by debasing the ‘political currency’ of a great nation will become the victim of Gresham’s Law. The bad and base currency of circulating officials that will bid for the positions of the Administration will drive the good and golden currency of officials out of circulation for these posts. Hence Obama’s future administration will be filled by political parvenus, professional opportunists, and Cagliostro like political impostors and all ‘playing their tunes’ under the master conductor of spin. Such an outcome will seriously undermine America’s prestige and éclat as a superpower. It will infernally endanger the vital interests of the nation and its security by enticing its mortal enemies to attack it, as they see that the rudder of America in the rough seas of the world is in the hands of an incompetent and weak president. The question is whether Americans will allow this to happen and whether they will have the intelligence and courage to use all means to halt him in his tracks and thus put an end to Obama’s ‘Directorate’ of social democracy which is ‘terrorizing’ America and to prevent at the eleventh hour the euthanasia of the presidency.

I rest on my oars: Your turn now     

Obama Doctrine of Leading from Behind Leads to the Destruction of America's Preponderance

History teaches that weakness is provocative. Time and again weakness has invited adventures which strength might well have deterred. Donald Rumsfeld

By Con George-Kotzabasis

One of Obama’s advisers described oxymoronically the actions of the president in Libya as “leading from behind.” At a historic moment for the people of North Africa and the Middle East when the winds of change are sweeping away a caste of authoritarian regimes, the USA under President Obama, has chosen not to be the avant-garde promoter and backer of this change but its rearguard.

Not since Rome was saved by the cackling of the geese from a barbaric invasion has there been a great event happening as an outcome of a humdrum ‘insignificant’ action. But in Tunisia, in February 2011, a street vendor would save the Arab peoples from the rapacious and brutal clutches of a conglomeration of despotic leaders. In such graphic terms historians write about the fates of people: the catalysts of great events are often the most ordinary of people; and the abortionists and ‘stiflers’ of great events are often those who have power but who are too timorous and abhor to use it due to their  Lilliputian leadership. Hence, we see the ‘abortionist’ Obama contra Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who by self-immolating himself in protest against the officials of a corrupt regime sparked the Arab revolt. President Obama as the leader of the most powerful nation of the world that is engaged in war with a mortal enemy, as Commander-in-Chief, instead of decisively helping and making sure that the Arab revolt against their oppressors succeeds, timidly decides, on so called pragmatic grounds, not to commit the necessary resources for such strategic, grandiose, and humane goal.

Furthermore, Obama’s strategic shift to “remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year, and we will bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer,” irrespective of conditions on the ground, which was his previous position, and not heeding and rejecting all his military commanders, from Admiral Mike Mullen to General David Petraeus, who cautioned him that an unconditional withdrawal from the country could imperil all the advantages that the Coalition had won over the Taliban with last year’s military surge, and indeed, could increase the danger to the remaining U.S. and allied forces and hence augment the number of casualties among them. President Obama, however, who presumably is deeply concerned about American lives lost in the war, totally disregarded this pre-cautionary and prudent advice coming from his top commanders and stuck doggedly to his schedule of withdrawal, which proved as some commentators said, his pulling out the troops had more to do with his prospects of being re-elected as president in 2012 than with the strategic and security interests of the United States.  The sage commentator of the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer poses the question: so why the choice of the end of summer 2012. The budget savings are trivial but the increased risk of mission failure in Afghanistan is great. The obvious answer is that domestic political considerations motivated President Obama to adopt this profoundly flawed strategy that will embolden its fanatic enemies to open new fields of battles against the U.S., and indeed attack it once again directly. Thus President Obama by disengaging from his implacable and irreconcilable foe externally he will be ‘inviting’ this sinister and deadly enemy to attack America internally.  

Afghanistan Remains Pivotal In The War Against Global Terror

The commanders on the ground aimed to consolidating the gains in southern Afghanistan and begin the major operations to secure the east, as their campaign plan had envisioned. With the announced ill-conceived withdrawal that will now be impossible. Moreover, as the outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen has warned, Obama’s decision will increase the risks to the troops and increase the chance that the mission will not succeed.

The Ivy League law professor, combined with the simplistic tasks of community organizer, who by the mere hateful animus a majority of Americans had against the Bush administration, and by association against Republicans, was pushed into the White House without anyone being genuinely concerned to scrutinize his political astuteness, mettle, experience , and ability to become  the Commander-in- Chief  in these most dangerous of times, does not comprehend the high stakes involved in a pre-mature withdrawal of U.S. forces from the battlefield of Afghanistan. He is incapable of seeing or unwilling to face the stark reality that America perforce after 9/11 put the flower of its youth in the frontlines of Afghanistan and Iraq for the purpose of defeating a dangerous and irreconcilable enemy, who would continuously threaten the security and well being of Americans until the day when he was totally disabled and beaten. Does the President seriously contemplate that by withdrawing his troops from Afghanistan, pulling them out of harm’s way, as he puts it, he will not be harming inevitably the vital geopolitical interests of the United States and the security and economic interests of its own people? Does he sincerely believe that by the cessation of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan against the Taliban and the ‘compound’ of Islamist fanatics that are concentrated in the Pak/Afghan region, he will not confronting them again in the near future in the same areas or in other Muslim countries, and indeed, within the heartland of America itself, and that like King Canute he will stop the tidal wave of fanatic terrorism from advancing to the shores of America, especially when the withdrawal will be seen by the combatants of Islam as a decisive defeat, like the Soviet’s, of  the American Satan? Does he not understand the Rumsfeldian principle that “weakness is provocative?”

No serious political thinker sees the war against Islamist extremists as a mistake or as an exercise of American expansion and domination. On the contrary, it is seen as a rational and urgent pre-emptive defensive response to the greatest threat that Western civilization will be facing in the twentieth-first century with the possible coupling of terrorists with rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction. And by its nature, this will be a long war that cannot be shortened by Obamanesque makeshift political contrivances that will satisfy the polloi, and by attitudinal changes toward this fanatical implacable foe.  The war can only be shortened, as was shown in Iraq, only when the enemy realizes that he is confronting an unflappable determined opponent who demonstrates his willingness to use his firepower relentlessly and remorselessly against him. It is by instilling the terror of annihilation into the hearts and minds of the terrorists that one can decisively subdue them.

The politically diffident and strategically un-savvy and poll-driven Obama is incapable of carrying on his politically rickety feet the heavy weight of statesmanship on his shoulders and thus protect America and the civilized world from the future ravages that the Islamist witches are concocting against the ‘infidels’. His rearguard presidency of “leading from behind,” saps the political oak of America of all its strength and makes it defenseless against the winds that are stirred up by Allah’s holy warriors. Obama’s unwillingness to engage the Gorgon of terror and its sponsors whenever and wherever it raises its head and cut it off, makes his presidency alien to the greatest danger the world is facing while at the same time enervates America’s preponderance in world affairs.  Only the removal of this totally inept and weak president will once again strengthen the United States against this infernal foe who threatens civilized life on a universal scale; only a new president with the daring and vitality of a Perseus to cut off the Gorgon’s head will rescue the ‘unbelievers’ from being decapitated by the scimitar of fanatic Islam.

I rest on my oars:your turn now...

Liberals Scapegoating Bush/Cheney for the Failings of Obama

By Con George-Kotzabasis

All the intellectual ‘bushrangers’, to use an Australian term, a la Stephen Walt and Steve Clemons, are once again picking up their cudgels to beat Bush. After using Bush/Cheney as scarecrows to terrify Americans during their administration, they are now using them as scapegoats for the failings of Obama. Even if one accepts their distorted facts as true, that Bush/Cheney dug the country into a hole from whose “gravitational pull” Obama cannot escape, that in itself incontrovertibly proves that Obama is too weak a president since he is pulled by this force and continues to function within these ‘wrong’ and ‘disastrous’ policies of the previous administration and cannot blaze his own course.

Yet Clemons and the “brilliant” Walt continue to believe that Obama still has the mettle and sagacity to “give America another chance at restoring its global leverage and purpose.” Only die-hard fideists could look forward, after Obama’s Calvary in the midterm elections, to his god-empowered resurrection.

Arianna Huffington's Aristophanean Wit Against The War

I'm republishing the following piece for the browsers  of this new website.                  

A retort: By Con George-Kotzabasis to:

                     Bush and the Truthiness Taliban By Arianna Huffington 

                     

                     Huffington Post-February 27, 2006

Arianna, coming long ago from an ancient philosophical stock, always presents her arguments with cogency and “tinsel town” wit. But whilst her Aristophanean wit has the power to lift even a great philosopher, the basket - laid Socrates into the clouds, she is no Athena, and lacks wisdom to bring the great philosopher down to earth from her politically idealistic clouds. . She argues that the Bush administration “sold us the invasion of Iraq” with false claims and half-truths, which she satirizes as “truthiness”, and she jeeringly says that the  “’Saddam unleashed mushroom clouds’ could be the logo for the truthiness society”, i.e., the Bush administration. But after the lethal attacks on New York and Washington, the Bush administration, or any administration, would hardly need to sell the war to Americans by sleek and crafty Madison Avenue techniques, as a majority of Americans would have bought the war, and did, at any price.

The fact is, that Bush invaded Iraq not because Saddam had a link to the 9/11 attack but because of the high probability of his link with a future 9/11, that would have been more devastating than the first one. No responsible and insightful political leadership could disregard and discount this probability of a connection between terrorists and rogue states in the near future, and do nothing about it. The war in Iraq had as its primary aim the prevention of this ominous coupling of suicidal fanatic terrorists with rogue states, the latter being willing and able to furnish the former with the lethal weapons that would mortally endanger America and the rest of the West. Only someone who was living in a state of pathological complacency and moral and intellectual indifference, enjoying the stupefying and ephemeral glittering comforts of ones narrow and egotistical existence could have mocked and lampooned the above “truthick” threat as “truthiness”. In times of danger, it’s utter foolishness to indulge in the rambling diversions of witty political satire or in gloomy broodings instead of taking firm action. 

Moreover, to bring in Halliburton’s corporate shenanigans, which for many Americans is justifiably an emotional issue, is to bring into the debate of the war the American public “roaring like an oak on fire”, to quote Aristophanes, when more than ever, in face of some US strategic errors, cool deliberation is needed.  Especially when, the question as to whether the US should stay the course in Iraq or should cut and run, must be answered by the public and its leaders from the Congress and the House, soberly and wisely. Probing to the highest possible degree whether a premature withdrawal from Iraq would bring in its wake dire and catastrophic consequences for the people of Iraq and of the region in general, and whether it would also embolden the terrorists to perpetrate even more deadly attacks against the US and the West in general. With such high stakes in place, Arianna’s insinuation that corporate greed is a major cause of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq is ethically and intellectually irresponsible. It’s also, historically and economically benighted. In all economic systems of demand and supply economic units prosper. In war when the demand reaches astronomical heights only the biggest and the most possibly efficient corporations can supply these huge demands. And by the irreversible laws of economics they are the biggest beneficiaries. But does this economic reality in any way impugn a just war? If I’m allowed to remind Arianna, Themistocles (I’m using this historical event as an illustration not as a comparison in respect to the personal merits of Bush or Cheney to those of the great Athenian), the victor of Xerxes invasion of Greece that saved the latter from despotism and slavery, was subsequently accused of peculation and was banished from Athens. Did this accusation in any way diminish Themistocles’s illustrious standing as one of the greatest generals of his era of whom Thucydides so admirably had written about?  

It maybe, that all the above examples are for Arianna seeds sown in a barren intellectual soil and she will never reap their invaluable lessons. It seems she is more concerned in vying with comedian Stephen Colbert - whom she calls the “godfather of truthiness” – for the first prize of truthiness, and it’s more likely than not that she will win the Dionysian Oscar for truthiness in this contest of wits.