Austin Bay from Creators Syndicate

Greek Fire, Euro-Roulette for 02/15/2012

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Anarchists tossing firebombs celebrated the Greek government's latest round of economic austerity measures. In their violent revelry's afterglow, four dozen or so Athenian buildings became party candles and 150 Athenian shops provided presents to any rioter willing to loot them.

As for the majority of the 80,000 Greek demonstrators protesting austerity measures? Violent provocateurs hija ...

Updated: Wed Feb 15, 2012

Syria: World War I Continues for 02/08/2012

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

In a Feb. 1 Wall Street Journal essay, the always eloquent and astute Fouad Ajami characterized Syria's bitter and bloody struggle as the Cold War's last battle.

Ajami's Cold War frame is very instructive — to a point. The ongoing diplomatic defense of Syria's Assad dictatorship by Russia's Vladimir Putin, with the semi-fraternal support of (still communist) China, has definite Col ...

Updated: Wed Feb 08, 2012

China's Sudan Dilemmas for 02/01/2012

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Sudan and South Sudan's slow yet deadly war of blood for oil reserves has ensnared Africa's slyest empire builder: Communist China.

The two Sudans' complex background helps illustrate China's emerging diplomatic quandaries in resource-rich but politically fractured sub-Saharan Africa. In July 2011, South Sudan separated from Sudan. Independence, the result of a legitimate southern plebis ...

Updated: Wed Feb 01, 2012

Bush Derangement Syndrome a Problem for Obama? for 01/25/2012

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Should war with Iran erupt, you can bet the 2012 election that the Obama administration hopes the national press will conveniently forget Ambassador Ryan Crocker's September 2007 reply to Rep. Tom Lantos' belittling question regarding U.S.-Iranian diplomacy. The American people shouldn't.

Recall the memorable scene. Leading left-wing elites (e.g., Harry Reid) had declared the Iraq war lo ...

Updated: Wed Jan 25, 2012

Nixon's 1972 Trip to China: China's First Modernization? for 01/18/2012

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

February 2012 will mark the 40th anniversary of former President Richard Nixon's historic Cold War visit to China. Nixon's trip produced the Shanghai Communique, a diplomatic statement in which both the U.S. and a still very red Communist China agreed to establish a political relationship based on something more than ideological antagonism and frozen or unfinished wars (North Korea and Taiwan) ...

Updated: Wed Jan 18, 2012

Defense Manifesto 2012: Obama Channels Rumsfeld for 01/11/2012

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

President Barack Obama's new American defense strategy doesn't look so new. His election-slanted Defense Strategic Guidance manifesto sounds more than a bit like Donald Rumsfeld-era chatter circa summer 2001. Aircraft, ships, smart weapons and intelligence systems? Yea, verily. Ground troops? Not so much, because we're done with Clinton-era peacekeeping, we'll save money (soldiers are expensive ...

Updated: Wed Jan 11, 2012

Greek Tragedy: Political Effects of a Deep Global Depression for 01/04/2012

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Colossal sovereign debts owed by member nations may yet shatter the eurozone. The political effects of a euro-breakup are uncertain, though Greece may be serving as an unfortunate indicator of what a small state can expect in terms of troubling future history if the world's fragile economic circumstances deteriorate.

Greece has witnessed a loss of faith in government and its leaders, lea ...

Updated: Wed Jan 04, 2012

2011: Bin Laden and Arab Spring in Context for 12/28/2011

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Cultural adaptation is a perniciously slow process. It has been a decade since Bernard Lewis' classic "What Went Wrong?" appeared in the wake of al-Qaida's 9/11 massacres. That short book reflected on the failure of Muslim nations (Ottoman Turkey in the main) to compete with Western Europe's political and technological surge, which began in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Geograp ...

Updated: Wed Dec 28, 2011

North Korea: The Kim is Dead, Long Live the Kim for 12/21/2011

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

For the second time in two decades, North Korea's hereditary communist state confronts dynastic change — and the civilized world, wary of the chronically belligerent realm's nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, draws a guarded breath.

Kim Jong Il, the squirrelly tinpot with a yen for kidnapping movie starlets, died last week. North Korea's propagandists tell us the deceased thug ...

Updated: Wed Dec 21, 2011

Holiday Greeting's From Iran: Grim, Cynical and Desperate for 12/14/2011

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Iran's tyrannical regime has sent the world what passes for a holiday greeting in contemporary Tehran — a grim and cynical threat.

This week, a member of Iran's National Security Committee intimated that Iran would soon demonstrate that it could close the Strait of Hormuz to oil tanker traffic. Paryiz Saryari, a member of Iran's sham parliament, added this bit of rhetorical fire: & ...

Updated: Wed Dec 14, 2011

Pearl Harbor and 9-11: Imagination, Deception and Audacity for 12/06/2011

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Imagination, deception and audacity, in combination, are the deadly acme of warfare. Japan's Pearl Harbor ambush of America's Pacific Fleet, which occurred 70 years ago this week, displayed these traits. So did al-Qaida's 9-11 savaging of American cities.

Despite clues and suggestive bits of intelligence, both attacks caught America by surprise and thrust the nation headlong into ongoing ...

Updated: Tue Dec 06, 2011

Tunisia and Its Islamists: The Revolution, Phase Two for 11/30/2011

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The social and economic success of Arab Spring 2011's revolutions hinges on the personal and public integrity of democratic political Islamists, like the leaders of Tunisia's Ennahda Party claim to be.

This week, Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution became the first Arab Spring state to enter Phase Two of the revolutionary process, as Islamist Ennahda formed a government tasked with writing a co ...

Updated: Wed Nov 30, 2011

Failed States, Curtailed States: Terror Versus Crime for 11/16/2011

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

On Aug. 25, members of the Zetas drug cartel gang attacked a casino in Monterrey, Mexico, and murdered 52 people.

It was a particularly gruesome act of mass slaughter, even for a nation that has seen 40,000 people killed since the Cartel War began in late December 2006. The gangsters sprayed the casino crowd with automatic weapons fire, then burned the building, igniting the blaze with j ...

Updated: Wed Nov 16, 2011

Iran: Armageddon One Day Closer for 11/09/2011

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

In 1981, Israeli fighter-bombers attacked and destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. That airstrike, widely condemned by the so-called civilized world, kept the truly barbaric Saddam Hussein from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

In 2011, three decades later, Iran's clerical dictatorship is moving ever closer to acquiring nuclear weapons, and the Israelis are threatening military action. Is ...

Updated: Wed Nov 09, 2011

Papandreou's Failed Gamble on Democracy for 11/03/2011

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

To the chagrin of European Union negotiators, the Greek government of Prime Minister George Papandreou decided to ask the Greek public to give its yea or nay regarding the terms of the European Union's latest bailout agreement.

Three days later, under intense political pressure, he canceled the referendum.

That's bad news for Europe, for Greece and for peace.

Papandreou ...

Updated: Thu Nov 03, 2011

Greece's Papandreou Gambles on Democracy for 11/02/2011

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

To the chagrin of European Union negotiators, the Greek government of Prime Minister George Papandreou has decided to ask the Greek public to give its yea or nay regarding the terms of the European Union's latest bailout agreement.

Papandreou's call for a national referendum troubled international financial markets. One German parliamentarian, who apparently thinks a NO vote is certain, ...

Updated: Wed Nov 02, 2011

From Arab Spring to Tunisian Fall -- Islamists Enter the School of Democracy for 10/26/2011

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The people of Tunisia, Arab Spring 2011's first revolutionaries, have earned their chance to struggle with one of the 21st century's most essential political, social and cultural questions: Will democracy moderate political Islamists, or will political Islamists undermine democracy?

Note I wrote "struggle," not "answer." The Tunisian people have embarked on a murky p ...

Updated: Wed Oct 26, 2011

Tracking Uganda's Lords Resistance Army: The Regional Context for 10/19/2011

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

For almost two decades, Joseph Kony, senior commander of the Ugandan rebel Lords Resistance Army, has practiced a peculiarly evil brand of the sociopathic warfare that curses central Africa.

Listing the horrors committed by Kony and his thugs numbs the mind, but also substantiates the case for dispatching U.S. special operations soldiers to help Ugandan forces combat the killers. The ve ...

Updated: Wed Oct 19, 2011

Arab Spring and the Paradox of American Leadership for 10/12/2011

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Militant Islamist extremists murdering Egyptian Christians offer one criminal version of change amidst the Arab Spring 2011 revolutions. Islamist extremists, many linked to Iran or al-Qaida, are using assassination and violence to intimidate and kill moderates committed to peaceful, democratic modernization.

The Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran certainly offers a model for changing culturally ...

Updated: Wed Oct 12, 2011

Ambushing Terror: Surprise, the Predator and the ACLU for 10/05/2011

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The appalling loss of life and physical destruction of al-Qaida's 9-11 suicide air strikes stunned the United States. The shock of surprise — the unexpected attack "out of nowhere" on the presumed safe havens of American cities — psychologically magnified the shock.

Al-Qaida's commanders sent the message that in their war on America and its allies, they possessed a ...

Updated: Wed Oct 05, 2011