All Mark Steyn‘s columns are so good, so funny however serious and important the point he is making, that it’s hard to say this one or that one is the best or the funniest. But a recent article titled Too Big To Win, on the highly important subject of America’s wars, must surely be among his best and funniest.

We are picking sentences and passages from it to give our readers a taste, but we hope they’ll be enticed to read the whole thing here and enjoy the feast.

Why can’t America win wars? …

Afghanistan? The “good war” is now “America’s longest war.” Our forces have been there longer than the Red Army was. The “hearts and minds” strategy is going so well that American troops are now being killed by the Afghans who know us best. …

Libya? The good news is that we’ve vastly reduced the time it takes us to get quagmired. I believe the Libyan campaign is already in The Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest quagmire on record. In an inspired move, we’ve chosen to back the one Arab liberation movement incapable of knocking off the local strongman even when you lend them every NATO air force. But not to worry: President Obama, cooed an administration official to The New Yorker, is “leading from behind.” Indeed. What could be more impeccably multilateral than a coalition pantomime horse composed entirely of rear ends? Apparently it would be “illegal” to target Colonel Qaddafi, so our strategic objective is to kill him by accident. So far we’ve killed a son and a couple of grandkids. Maybe by the time you read this we’ll have added a maiden aunt or two to the trophy room. It’s not precisely clear why offing the old pock-skinned transvestite should be a priority of the U.S. right now, but let’s hope it happens soon, because otherwise there’ll be no way of telling when this “war” is “ended.”

According to partisan taste, one can blame the trio of current morasses on Bush or Obama, but in the bigger picture they’re part of a pattern of behavior that predates either man, stretching back through non-victories great and small — Somalia, Gulf War One, Vietnam, Korea. On the more conclusive side of the ledger, we have . . . well, lemme see: Grenada, 1983. And, given that that was a bit of post-colonial housekeeping Britain should have taken care of but declined to, one could argue that even that lone bright spot supports a broader narrative of Western enfeeblement. At any rate, America’s only unambiguous military triumph since 1945 is a small Caribbean island with Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. For 43 percent of global military expenditure, that’s not much bang for the buck. …

At the dawn of the so-called American era, Washington chose to downplay U.S. hegemony and instead created and funded transnational institutions in which the non-imperial superpower was so self-deprecating it artificially inflated everybody else’s status in a kind of geopolitical affirmative-action program. …   In 1950, America had a unique dominance of the “free world” and it could afford to be generous, so it was: We had more money than we knew what to do with, so we absolved our allies of paying for their own defense. …

By the time the Cold War ended … U.S.–Soviet nuclear standoff of mutual deterrence decayed into a unipolar world of U.S. auto-deterrence. …

At a certain level, credible deterrence depends on a credible enemy. The Soviet Union disintegrated, but the surviving superpower’s instinct to de-escalate intensified: In Kirkuk as in Kandahar, every Lilliputian warlord quickly grasped that you could provoke the infidel Gulliver with relative impunity. Mutually Assured Destruction had curdled into Massively Applied Desultoriness. …

The Pentagon outspends the Chinese, British, French, Russian, Japanese, German, Saudi, Indian, Italian, South Korean, Brazilian, Canadian, Australian, Spanish, Turkish, and Israeli militaries combined. So why doesn’t it feel like that?

Well, for exactly that reason: If you outspend every serious rival combined, you’re obviously something other than the soldiery of a conventional nation state. But what exactly? In the Nineties, the French liked to complain that “globalization” was a euphemism for “Americanization.” But one can just as easily invert the formulation: “Americanization” is a euphemism for “globalization,” in which the geopolitical sugar daddy is so busy picking up the tab for the global order he loses all sense of national interest. … The Pentagon now makes war for the world. …

An army has to wage war on behalf of something real. For better or worse, “king and country” is real, and so, mostly for worse, are the tribal loyalties of Africa’s blood-drenched civil wars. But it’s hardly surprising that it’s difficult to win wars waged on behalf of something so chimerical as “the international community.” If you’re making war on behalf of an illusory concept, is it even possible to have war aims? What’s ours? “[We] are in Afghanistan to help the Afghan people,” General Petraeus said in April. Somewhere generations of old-school imperialists are roaring their heads off, not least at the concept of “the Afghan people.” But when you’re the expeditionary force of the parliament of man, what else is there? …

Nation building in Afghanistan is the ne plus ultra of a fool’s errand. But even if one were so disposed, effective “nation building” is done in the national interest of the builder. The British rebuilt India in their own image, with a Westminster parliament, common law, and an English education system. In whose image are we building Afghanistan? Eight months after Petraeus announced his latest folly, the Afghan Local Police initiative, Oxfam reported that the newly formed ALP was a hotbed of torture and pederasty. Almost every Afghan institution is, of course. But for most of human history they’ve managed to practice both enthusiasms without international subvention. The U.S. taxpayer accepts wearily the burden of subsidy for Nevada’s cowboy poets and San Francisco’s mime companies, but, even by those generous standards of cultural preservation, it’s hard to see why he should be facilitating the traditional predilections of Pashtun men with an eye for the “dancing boys of Kandahar.” …

So the Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity is building schoolhouses in Afghanistan. Big deal. The problem, in Kandahar as in Kansas, is not the buildings but what’s being taught inside them — and we’ve no stomach for getting into that. So what’s the point of building better infrastructure for Afghanistan’s wretched tribal culture? What’s our interest in state-of-the-art backwardness?

Transnational do-gooding is political correctness on tour. It takes the relativist assumptions of the multiculti varsity and applies them geopolitically: The white man’s burden meets liberal guilt. No wealthy developed nation should have a national interest, because a national interest is a selfish interest. Afghanistan started out selfishly — a daringly original military campaign, brilliantly executed, to remove your enemies from power and kill as many of the bad guys as possible. Then America sobered up and gradually brought a freakish exception into compliance with the rule. In Libya as in Kosovo, war is legitimate only if you have no conceivable national interest in whatever conflict you’re fighting. The fact that you have no stake in it justifies your getting into it. The principal rationale is that there’s no rationale, and who could object to that? Applied globally, political correctness obliges us to forswear sovereignty. …

On we stagger, with Cold War institutions, transnational sensibilities, politically correct solicitousness, fraudulent preening pseudo–nation building, expensive gizmos, little will, and no war aims . . . but real American lives. … Sixty-six years after V-J Day, the American way of war needs top-to-toe reinvention.

“Egypt has 82 million people; Iran has 78 million people. Turkey has 79 million people. Total: By the end of this year, almost 240 million people in those three countries alone will live under Islamist or radical anti-American regimes allied to them. Adding in the Gaza Strip, those under Hizballah control in Lebanon, and Syria brings the total to about 250 million. One-quarter of a billion people are going to be in the enemy camp.”

Barry Rubin captions this picture:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gives a “high-five” to Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoğlu on June 9. Davutoğlu authored a Turkish foreign policy designed to align an Islamist Turkey with the Islamic world and turn against America and the West… So here’s the key figure in aligning Turkey as an ally of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah, yet that’s no problem for Clinton, laughing it up with one of America’s most dangerous  enemies.

Rubin writes further:

On Sunday, June 12, Turkey will hold what might well be its most important elections in modern history. It may also be the worst thing that’s happened to the country in modern history. If the current regime is reelected … the emboldened Islamist regime will hit the accelerator in transforming Turkey into as much of an Islamist state as possible. …

That development will spell the end of a U.S.-Turkish alliance that has endured 55 years. Turkey, arguably the Muslim-majority country with the most advanced infrastructure and greatest military capability in the world, will be in the enemy camp.

Already, the Turkey-Israel alliance is long over and will not return under this regime in Ankara. The Turkish government supports Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah. The regime officially sponsors antisemitic hatred. … Nothing like it has been seen in Turkey during all of the centuries since the Turks arrived in Anatolia. …

If the regime gets a big enough majority it will rewrite the Turkish constitution. Turkey, as we have known it, a secular democratic state since the 1920s, will no longer exist. … The courts, the armed forces, and other institutions will be taken over by this Islamist government. It will be a disaster for Western interests. …

Meanwhile, the West snores on. Western media coverage of the Turkish regime is glowing. Yet if one actually looks at what’s happening in the country, reading the Turkish-language media and talking to the many Turks horrified by these developments, the picture is horrifying. …

Scores of journalists have been arrested and thrown into jail. One-third of the media has been bought up by the regime; much of the rest intimidated. Military officers, college professors, union leaders, activists, and peaceful critics of every description are thrown into jail on trumped up charges and kept there for months, years. The waiting time for a trial during which people are jailed is now three years. … Hundreds of people imprisoned have not even been accused of any specific act. … People feel that they are watched, wire-tapped, and spied on. … This atmosphere is closer to that of a country under Communism than the Turkey they have known all their lives. …

The campaign of anti-Americanism is in the open. The daily preaching of hatred against Jews and Israel is in the open. The tightening links with Islamist movements and regimes is in the open.

As we know from leaks, the U.S. embassy in Turkey has reported many of the kinds of arguments and analysis I’m making. Yet the White House and the president are blind….

Perception of this revolutionary Islamist threat by Obama White House: Close to zero.

Actions taken by the Obama White House to counter it: Zero.

Principal enemy according to White House: Al-Qaida, which rules no population.

Main problem in the Middle East according to White House: Israel’s presence on part of the West Bank …

Egypt has 82 million people; Iran has 78 million people. Turkey has 79 million people. Total: By the end of this year, almost 240 million people in those three countries alone will live under Islamist or radical anti-American regimes allied to them. Adding in the Gaza Strip, those under Hizballah control in Lebanon, and Syria brings the total to about 250 million. One-quarter of a billion people are going to be—many of them involuntarily–in the enemy camp. …

The loss of Turkey … would be a tragedy of tremendous proportions to the West …

The failure to see what’s happening is shameful. In policy and analytical terms, it is the equivalent of criminal.

But is it blindness on the part of the Obama administration? Isn’t it possible that Hillary Clinton’s obvious delight in the picture expresses the true feelings of the government she serves?

The revolutions in the Arab states of North Africa have not been a success by any definition. Want is spreading: there could be mass starvation. Refugees are scattering eastward and northward by the hundreds of thousands.

As the disaster deepens, Italy has begun to feel the effect. Turkey is bracing for it.

Years of corruption are bringing their ineluctable results with the devastating force of an economic tornado.

Spengler writes at the Asian Times online:

I’ve been warning for months that Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and other Arab oil-importing countries face a total economic meltdown … Now the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has confirmed my warnings.

The IMF, remember, is a socialist institution whose prosperity-destroying work is to redistribute wealth globally.

The leaders of the industrial nations waited until last weekend’s Group of Eight (G-8) summit to respond, and … President Barack Obama proposed what sounds like a massive aid program but probably consists mainly of refurbishing old programs.

The egg has splattered, and all of Obumpty’s horses and men can’t mend it. Even the G-8’s announcement was fumbled; Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper refused to commit new money …

Stephen Harper is one of the very few principled leaders in the world at present.

The numbers thrown out by the IMF are stupefying. “In the current baseline scenario,” wrote the IMF on May 27, “the external financing needs of the region’s oil importers is projected to exceed $160 billion during 2011-13.” That’s almost three years’ worth of Egypt’s total annual imports as of 2010. As of 2010, the combined current account deficit (that is, external financing needs) of Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Morocco and Tunisia was about $15 billion a year.

What the IMF says, in effect, is that the oil-poor Arab economies – especially Egypt – are not only broke, but dysfunctional, incapable of earning more than a small fraction of their import bill. The disappearance of tourism is an important part of the problem, but shortages of fuel and other essentials have had cascading effects throughout these economies.

“In the next 18 months,” the IMF added, “a greater part of these financing needs will need to be met from the international community because of more cautious market sentiments during the uncertain transition.”

Translation: private investors aren’t stupid enough to throw money down a Middle Eastern rat-hole, and now that the revolutionary government has decided to make a horrible example of deposed president Hosni Mubarak, anyone who made any money under his regime is cutting and running. At its May 29 auction of treasury bills, Egypt paid about 12% for short-term money, to its own captive banking system. Its budget deficit in the next fiscal year, the government says, will exceed $30 billion.

And the IMF’s $160 billion number is only “external financing”; that is, maintaining imports into a busted economy. It doesn’t do a thing to repair busted economies that import half their caloric intake, as do the oil-poor Arab nations.

Egypt’s economy is in free fall. …

Of course, the IMF’s admission that Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Yemen can’t meet the majority of their import bill without foreign aid does not increase the probability that these countries will obtain financing on that scale. On May 30, the IMF announced that it would lend $3 billion to Egypt – a tenth of its budget deficit – sometime in June. The G-8 offered the grandiose pledge of $20 billion in their own money along with $20 billion from the IMF, World Bank, and so forth, to support the “Arab Spring”, with the dissension of the Canadian prime minister. But it is unclear whether that represents new money, or a shuffling of existing aid commitments, or nothing whatever.

Whatever the Group of Eight actually had in mind, the proposed aid package for the misnomered Arab Spring has already become a punching bag for opposition budget-cutters.

As it must and should.

One American politician asking the right questions is Sarah Palin:

“Should we be borrowing money from China to turn around and give it to the Muslim Brotherhood?” Sarah Palin asked on May 27. “Now, given that Egypt has a history of corruption when it comes to utilizing American aid, it is doubtful that the money will really help needy Egyptian people. Couple that with the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is organized to have a real shot at taking control of Egypt’s government, and one has to ask why we would send money (that we don’t have) into unknown Egyptian hands.” …

Last month, rice disappeared from public storehouses amid press reports that official food distribution organizations were selling the grain by the container on the overseas market. Last week, diesel fuel was the scarce commodity, with 24-hour queues forming around gasoline stations. Foreign tankers were waiting at Port Said on the Suez Canal to pump diesel oil from storage facilities, as government officials sold the scarce commodity for cash. …

Syria is also vulnerable to hunger, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned May 23. “Continuing unrest in Syria will not only affect economic growth but could disrupt food distribution channels leading to severe localized shortages in main markets,” according to the FAO. ”Syria hosts one of the largest urban refugee populations in the world, including nearly one million Iraqis who have become more vulnerable because of rising food and fuel prices.”

Nearly 700,000 Libyan refugees have reached Egypt, fleeing their country’s civil war. At least 30,000 Tunisian refugees (and likely many more) have overwhelmed camps in Italy, and perhaps a tenth of that number have drowned in the attempt to reach Europe. A large but unknown number of Syrian refugees have fled to Lebanon and Turkey. …

Turkey fears a mass influx of Syrian Kurdish refugees, so that “Turkish generals have thus prepared an operation that would send several battalions of Turkish troops into Syria itself to carve out a ‘safe area’ for Syrian refugees inside Assad’s caliphate.” The borders of the affected nations have begun to dissolve along with their economies.

It will get worse fast.

Europe has capitulated to Islam.

The Jews of Europe, what’s left of them, are being harried out, mostly by the Muslims, but also by the media (such as, and especially, the BBC and the Guardian newspaper), and lickspittle dhimmi politicians and judges who are keeping the seats of power warm for their incoming Muslim overlords.

From the American Thinker:

An ugly, uni-directional pattern of bigoted violence is once again clearly on display in Western Europe. European Muslims have attacked individual Jews, synagogues, and Jewish or Israeli institutions, in Sweden, Denmark, France, Belgium, Spain, Greece, and Britain. …

Scant attention (or none at all) is being paid to the unequivocal, virulent incitement for these Antisemitic attacks emanating from the Muslim world … Hamas, for example, on its official website (posted December 31, 2008 at the site hosted by Emirnet, United Arab Emirates) urged Muslims to attack Jews across the world … Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar … advocated the murder of Jewish children, globally, claiming Israel had “legitimized the killing of their people all over the world.” …

Murderous calls for indiscriminate anti-Jewish violence … are also expressed locally, by jihadists within Europe….

On a population percentage basis, Muslims in Europe accounted for roughly 24.0 to 32.3 times the number of Antisemitic incidents as their non-Muslim European counterparts.

Hatred of Jews and recommendations that they should be killed are a large part of the religious teaching of Islam:

The ultimate “inspiration” for such rampant Muslim Jew-hatred within Europe’s Muslim communities can be traced to the sacralized bigotry of Islam’s foundational texts, disseminated by Muslim clerics such as Sheikh Feiz. As documented in a British television investigation broadcast January, 2007, the Jew-annihilationist eschatological theme from the canonical hadith quoted in the Hamas Covenant, article 7, The Prophet, ‘Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, says: “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him, except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.’ ”  …

So where are the trials of Muslims charged with incitement to racial hatred and violence?

We’ve tried but failed to find them.

However, Europeans who make known such facts as the American Thinker does, are on trial for doing so.

Also from the American Thinker:

[In Brussels] the Vigilance Musulmane (Muslim Vigilance) advocacy group filed a complaint with the Centre for Equal Opportunities and the Fight Against Racism (CGKR) against professor of sociology Mark Elchardus for statements about Islamic Jew hatred. …

Professor Elchardus’ conclusions are based upon data from a 426 pp. report he co-authored entitled, “Young in Brussels: findings from the JOP monitor Brussels.” Chapter 8 of this study, “Anti-Semitism in Brussels,” devotes some thirty pages to highlighting the problem of rising Jew-hatred in Brussels, particularly amongst young Muslim students. Elchardus provided this overview of the alarming problem to De Morgen:

“Worrying is that half [only half?- JB] of Muslim students can be described as anti-Semitic … Worse, the anti-Jewish feelings have nothing to do with a low educational or social disadvantage, as is the case with racist natives. It is theologically inspired anti-Semitism… Islam’s canonical texts – Koran, hadith, and sira – are redolent with Islamic Jew-hatred …”

The impact of such sacralized, mainstream Islamic Jew hatred on Western Europe’s burgeoning Muslim community is equally apparent. During February of 2008, then European Commissioner for Justice, Freedom, and Security [bit of Orwellian Newspeak there! – JB], Franco Frattini, the European Union (EU) official responsible “for combating racism and Antisemitism in Europe,” revealed that Muslims were responsible for fully half (50%) of the documented Antisemitic incidents on the European continent. Demographic data from 2007 indicated that the total number of Europeans is 494.8 million; estimates of the number of Muslims in Europe range from 15-20 million, or some ~3.0-4.0% of the total European population. Thus, on a population percentage basis, Muslims in Europe already accounted for roughly 24.0 to 32.3 times the number of Antisemitic incidents as their non-Muslim European counterparts. …

Rather than being maliciously sued, the Professor should be commended by all decent people for his intellectual honesty and moral courage.

Other Europeans who, like Professor Elchardus, have spoken the truth about Islam and have famously been brought to trial are Elisabeth Sabaditsch–Wolffe (fined for the “denigration of religious teachings of a legally recognized religion in Austria”); Lars Hedegaard (found guilty of hate speech in Denmark), and Geert Wilders.

Today Geert Wilders made his final remarks to the court trying him for “inciting hatred” of Muslims. Here’s part of what he said:

I am obliged to speak. For the Netherlands is under threat of Islam. As I have argued many times, Islam is chiefly an ideology. An ideology of hatred, of destruction, of conquest. It is my strong conviction that Islam is a threat to Western values, to freedom of speech, to the equality of men and women, of heterosexuals and homosexuals, of believers and unbelievers.

All over the world we can see how freedom is fleeing from Islam. Day by day we see our freedoms dwindle.

Islam is opposed to freedom. Renowned scholars of Islam from all parts of the world agree on this. …

The statements for which I am being tried are statements which I made in my function as a politician participating in the public debate in our society. My statements were not aimed at individuals, but at Islam and the process of islamization. …

I am acting within a long tradition which I wish to honour. I am risking my life in defence of freedom in the Netherlands. Of all our achievements freedom is the most precious and the most vulnerable. Many have given their lives for freedom. …

I do not wish to betray the trust of the 1.5 million voters of my party. I do not wish to betray my country. Inspired by Johan van Oldenbarneveldt and Johan de Witt I wish to be a politician who serves the truth end hence defends the freedom of the Dutch provinces and of the Dutch people. I wish to be honest, I wish to act with honesty and that is why I wish to protect my native land against Islam. Silence is treason.

That is why I have spoken, why I speak and why I shall continue to speak. …

I pay the price every day. Day and night I have to be protected against people who want to kill me. I am not complaining about it; it has been my own decision to speak. However, those who threaten me and other critics of Islam are not being tried here today. I am being tried …

My right to a fair trial has been violated. The order of the Amsterdam Court to prosecute me was not just a decision but a condemning verdict by judges who condemned me even before the actual trial had begun.

Mister President, members of the Court, you must now decide whether freedom still has a home in the Netherlands.

Franz Kafka said: “One sees the sun slowly set, yet one is surprised when it suddenly becomes dark.”

Mister President, members of the Court, do not let the lights go out in the Netherlands. …

Acquit me. Political freedom requires that citizens and their elected representatives are allowed to voice opinions that are held in society.

Acquit me, for if I am convicted, you convict the freedom of opinion and expression of millions of Dutchmen.

Acquit me. I do not incite to hatred. I do not incite to discrimination. But I defend the character, the identity, the culture and the freedom of the Netherlands. That is the truth. That is why I am here. That is why I speak. …

Mister President, members of the Court, though I stand here alone, my voice is the voice of many. This trial is not about me. It is about something much greater. Freedom of expression is the life source of our Western civilisation. …

Mister President, members of the Court, you have a great responsibility. Do not cut freedom in the Netherlands from its roots, our freedom of expression. Acquit me. Choose freedom. …

We ardently hope Wilders will be acquitted. But whether he is or not, Europe has irreversibly condemned itself.

Is Qaddafi victorious against the combined forces of France, Britain, and the US (aka NATO)?

According to this report he is. We can’t vouch for its reliability, but from the look of things we think it may be right.

Neither the US nor Russia sees anyone in the Libyan rebel political or military leadership capable of taking over the reins of power in Tripoli. It is therefore assumed that a member of the Qaddafi clan will be chosen as Libya’s interim ruler.

Obama and Medvedev also quietly agreed, those sources say, that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron, despite their excessive involvement in the Libyan war, were wasting their time because they had no chance of making Qaddafi leave.

According to the information the Russian president offered Obama, NATO attacks had not disabled a single one of Qaddafi’s five brigades. Obama confirmed this from his own sources.

Qaddafi might not, however, be able to hang on to power:

The same report claims  that Medvedev and Obama “traded” Assad for Qaddafi – ie. they agreed that Bashar Assad, the tyrant of Syria, would stay in power as the Russian leadership wishes him to, and Qaddafi would go as the Obama administration desires.

Word [is] going round that President Barak Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev Friday, May 27, came to a reciprocal understanding on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Deauville about the fate of the Syrian and Libyan rulers.

Obama is reported to have promised Medvedev to let Assad finish off the uprising against him without too much pressure from the US and the West. In return, the Russian president undertook to help the US draw the Libyan war to a close by means of an effort to bring about Muammar Qaddafi’s exit from power – in a word, the two big powers traded Qaddafi for Assad.

What sort of man is it that Obama is protecting, if the report is true?

This story graphically confirms what the world should already know about Bashar Assad:

Hamza al Khateeb, a 13 years old boy … was detained among hundreds of Syrian during the massacre of Siada.

After weeks of absence Hamza was returned to his family as a dead body … with scars testifying to the torture … bruises, burns to the feet, elbows, face and knees and his genitals removed. …  wounds consistent with those seen of victims of electric shock devices and cable whippings. The child’s eyes [were] swollen and black, and both arms showed identical bullet wounds. …

After receiving his body, Khatib’s family was visited by Syrian secret police, who arrested the boy’s father. The boy’s mother said officers ordered her husband to say the boy was killed by armed Salafists, or ultra-conservative Muslims, whom Assad has claimed as being behind the unrest.

She said the secret police had warned her not to speak to the press, threatening, “You know what would happen if we heard you had spoken to the media.”

What is more, Assad is a tool of Iran, and Obama knows it:

Washington Post has quoted unnamed US officials as saying that Iran has been sending trainers and consultants to Syria to help the Syrian regime in its brutal crackdown against the protesters .

The paper also reported that this is in addition to special equipment the Iranians sent to the Syrian authorities to help them in identifying and tracking down the protesters that use Facebook and Twitter.

This means that the Syrian and Iranian regimes, far from being targeted as enemies of the US, are enjoying a form of protection by the Obama administration.

For those who have a taste for satire, here are extracts from a good one by Daniel Greenfield. It needs to be read in full. For all its bitter slant, it tells the truth clear as a trumpet blast.

We need a terrorist state. Where the politicians are terrorists, the police are terrorists and even the men sitting at the desk when you come in to drop off a form are terrorists. There are states that support terrorists, and give safe harbor to them, but that’s not good enough. We don’t want another Pakistan or Iran. We’re not half-assing it this time. What we want is the genuine article. Terrorists from the top down. Terrorists everywhere. A state where every branch of government and the entire country is nothing but terrorists.

Terroristine has been an ancient dream since 1973 or was it 1967. A generation of keffiyah draped thugs, KGB operatives and human rights activists have looked out into the darkness and called it into being. It is a vision of a country where everyone is a murderer and children are taught from a very young age that their purpose in life is to die killing people who don’t share their religion and way of life.

And now after 20 years of negotiations, treaties, suicide bombings, mutilations, billions of dollars in vanishing into Swiss bank accounts and the death of its Egyptian born leader [Yasser Arafat] of AIDS — Terroristine is closer than ever to coming into being. …

The question is can we make it happen? Yes, we can. Oh sweet Allah, yes we can.

I am proud of Obama for finally standing up to the Israelis and telling them that they must ethnically cleanse hundreds of thousands of Jews, from their ancient towns, villages and cities, to make way for Terroristine. Someone had to say it. And it was either going to be Carter or Obama.

By endorsing the 1967 borders, he endorsed the outcome of the Arab invasion of Israel in 1948. Every time his administration condemns a Jewish house in Jerusalem, he endorses the Jordanian conquest of the city. Why are the borders of the 1948 war so much better than the borders of the Six Day War? Because the Terroristinians came closer to winning that war. Came closer to driving the Yahood [Jews] into the sea and ululating over mile after mile of their corpses.

But the dream failed. Farmers armed with outdated rifles. Volunteer pilots from America and Canada. Refitted cargo ships filled with half-dead men, women and children straight from the camps. Used Czech artillery. They held off the armies of seven Terroristinian nations. Farm by farm, they stood off tanks and infantry. In Jerusalem, they fought for every house. And so the Zionist entity survived. Allah curse them. They survived.

But now it’s back to 1948 again. Every war undone. Every defeat turned to victory. Cut Jerusalem in two. Drive out the farmers. Burn their land. Dig up their graves. March the borders back to 1948. And fly the Terroristinian flag over dust and rubble.

Had they won in 1948 or 1967 or 1973, there would be no Israel and no Terroristine. The land would have become part of Syria, Egypt and Jordan. … But now there is hope for a two state solution. A state of civilization on one side and a state of terrorists on the other. Hospitals here, launching pads there. Schools here, bomb factories there. Life here, death here. …

Why do we need Terroristine? Peace. There can be no peace without a terrorist state. Not a chance of it. The only way we’ll ever have peace is to give the terrorists a country of their own. A country dedicated to terrorism. Only then will the Terroristinians finally give up on all the killing, and dedicate themselves to medical research, quantum physics and the arts. It hasn’t happened yet to. But it’s bound to. …

Would Kaddafi or Assad be killing protesters in the streets if there was a Terroristinian state? Would there be turmoil in Tunisia or Egypt? Would Saudi tanks be rolling over Shiites and Coptic churches burning if there was a Terroristine? Assuredly not. The moment the flag of Terroristine rises above the wounded hills, and its peaceful anthem, “Palestine is My Revenge” is heard in the land, then a great echoing sigh will rise up from the mouths of one billion Muslims. And the violence will cease.

The international community is impatient. Damn impatient. They want Terroristine and they want it now. The negotiations must lead to immediate productive results. Whatever Israel has offered in the past, it isn’t enough. It must offer more and more. Whatever it takes. …

Have any people suffered the way the Terroristinians have? … Have any other people been wholly subsidized by a UN agency dedicated only to them? Have any other people inspired such a stylish fashion statement?

No more excuses. The world demands Terroristine. Middle East peace demands Terroristine. How much longer can Israel expect to draw out negotiations with weak justifications about terrorism. We know they’re terrorists. That’s why we’re giving them a state. …

Yallah. One day the borders of Terroristine will stretch from Spain to Pakistan. Or beyond Why settle for Jerusalem, when we can have London, Paris and Hamburg too. Why settle for anything at all? Allah is generous to the believers. Our people are in Africa. Even China. The Great Satan himself bows toward Mecca. The old governments are falling. The Arab Spring is here. The pawns of the Kufir are fleeing before our eyes. We are all Terroristinians now. There is no other book on our shelves than the Koran. No law but Sharia in our hearts. And no nation but Terroristine. …

These mugs, showing Obama dressed in Arafat’s signature headgear, are on sale in Gaza.

On May 19, 2011, President Obama made a speech that condemned Israel to extinction by declaring its borders should be more or less the 1948 armistice lines, within which Israel was highly vulnerable. These he called the “1967 lines” – meaning the lines as on June 4, 1967, just before Israel was attacked by Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Israel defended itself, won by hard fighting, and established more defensible “borders”. Its offers of negotiation were refused by the Arab aggressors. For Israel to go back to the 1948 lines could be suicidal.

Obama demanded nothing from the Palestinians: no recognition of Israel’s right to exist; no stopping of rocket attacks, suicide bombing, or their constant and  intense propaganda of hate and genocide.

He sided with the Palestinians. In their eyes, he has inherited the mantle – or rather, the keffiyeh of Arafat, famously shaped as the “State of Palestine” he hoped to see on the map.

Reforming, Syrian-style: on the orders of the Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad – whom Hillary Clinton calls a “reformer” – a tank squashes a citizen (or two).