Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey is furious that the Palmer report found Israel was acting legally when it intercepted the protest flotilla launched from Turkey to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza in May 2010. (See our post A surprise, Sept. 1, 2011). The report – although issued by the United Nations – actually found fault with the protestors and with Turkey itself.

The Islamic world is not used to being found fault with by the UN, especially in relation to Israel. And Erdogan won’t stand for it.

He plots revenge – not against the UN but against Israel.

“I will do such things – what they are, yet I  know not: but they shall be the terrors of the earth!”

Well, that wasn’t exacty what he said – that was King Lear. Erdogan has some definite plans in mind, not very awe inspiring, but he sure would like them to be the terrors of the earth.

These are the things he has threatened to do:

Strengthen the presence of the Turkish navy in the eastern Mediterranean, and “pursue a more aggressive strategy”.

Again send ships to “carry aid” to Gaza. Turkish naval vessels will accompany civilian ships carrying aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.Whether to try reaching the shore of Gaza itself, in order to incite action by the Israeli navy, is not clear.

Personally visit Gaza. Whether he’ll sail directly to Gaza, to incite interception, is again not clear. An official said –

“Our primary purpose is to draw the world’s attention to what is going on in Gaza and to push the international community to end the unfair embargo imposed by Israel.”

If the blockade is not illegal it is at least “unfair”, Turkey maintains. To be fair, the Israelis should allow Hamas to import weapons freely into Gaza to use against them.

Will Erdogan really do what he threatens and risk a clash at sea with Israel? Or is all his vengeful talk mere bluster?

According to this report, Israel’s navy is far superior to Turkey’s:

The Turkish Navy is no match for Israeli missile boat technology and their electronic jamming and tracking systems. Neither do the Turks have advanced submarines like Israel’s German-made Dolphins or close air cover.

Stamping about the stage raging against Israel may be all he can do.

Time will tell.

There is far more violence and killing in the Middle East, on the ground and from the air, within and across the borders of sovereign states, than even the most attentive news addict would learn from the Western media.

Here’s a report on Turkey’s bombing of northern Iraq.

The Iraqi government is apparently unmoved by the military attack on its territory – not moved to indignation anyway. Perhaps it silently welcomes the onslaught, since the victims are Kurds. Anyway, it has made no attempt to repel the bombers by force or even by diplomacy.

The Western mass media, and the UN, and the government of the United States, also choose to ignore the continuing military operation.

Western governments, media, and professional humanitarians do not find the Kurds interesting.

Turkey justifies its attack by claiming to be retaliating for the killing of  Turkish soldiers by Kurdish terrorists.

Western governments, media, and professional humanitarians have not proclaimed that the retaliation is “disproportionate”.

Iran too has recently bombed the Kurds in northern Iraq. No protests. Except by the Kurds, of course – but the powers that have signed on to a UN resolution to protect civilians are not listening to them.

Since mid-July hundreds of Kurdish civilians in Iraq have fled bombings by the Iranian and Turkish armies, and set up refugee camps that are situated along the northern part of Iraqi Kurdistan (which borders Turkey and Iran). Up to a hundred Kurds have been killed in these bombings.

A Turkish crackdown on Kurds is nothing new and is part of an ongoing war with the terrorist organization PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), that started in 1984. In this war approx. 40,000 people – most of them Kurds – died, another two million Kurds or so were displaced and more than 3000 Kurdish villages were destroyed.

This time around however, the stakes are much higher since the Kurds have cast their eyes on the ‘Arab spring’, and feel that this might be the moment to establish an independent Kurdistan.

The situation on the border of northern Iraq started to deteriorate when Iran began bombing Kurdish villages in July. …

Turkish officials insist that the raids are not aimed at civilians but are meant to destroy the PKK’s infrastructure and to annihilate its fighters. …

Aimed at or not, civilians have been killed.

The recent Turkish military campaign triggered Iraqi Kurdish protests. They started when a family of seven was killed by a Turkish air strike near the town of Rania in Iraq, next to the Iranian border.

But let none say that Prime Minister Erdogan, who ordered the Turkish air force to bomb the Kurds in northern Iraq, and under whom “Turkey is rapidly becoming less democratic and more Islamic”, is without a soft side to his nature. He has spoken out against the violence unleashed in Syria, on Kurds and others, by Assad:

Erdogan … harshly criticized Bashar al-Assad’s bloody suppression of opposition protests in neighboring Syria, which has its own Kurdish minority. Tensions between Turkey and Syria boiled over this week, after Assad told Erdogan not to interfere in internal Syrian affairs. …

Erdogan will not confine himself to minding Turkish affairs. He “aims to Islamize Turkish society and to limit political freedom” as the report rightly says, and he is off to a strong start in realizing his agenda not only in his own country but beyond:

The Erdogan regime is supporting the Islamist agenda for the Middle East and working to become a regional superpower.

The writing is on the wall but it is highly doubtful the West will notice it.

Until it must, when the conflagration spreads – as it almost certainly will –  too widely to be ignored any longer.

Note: It should be remembered that Turkey is a member of NATO.

There are conflicts in which neither side is worthy of sympathy.

An example from the past is the Afghan Mujahideen versus the Soviet Union. The Western powers decided to give help to the Mujahideen. The result was the victory of the Taliban, the formation of al-Qaeda, and 9/11.

Another example, in the present, is the Libyan civil war in which again both sides are abominable.

This report comes from The Independent:

The killings were pitiless.

They had taken place at a makeshift hospital, in a tent marked clearly with the symbols of the Islamic Crescent. Some of the dead were on stretchers, attached to intravenous drips. Some were on the back of an ambulance that had been shot at. A few were on the ground, seemingly attempting to crawl to safety when the bullets came.

Around 30 men lay decomposing in the heat. Many of them had their hands tied behind their back, either with plastic handcuffs or ropes. One had a scarf stuffed into his mouth. Almost all of the victims were black men. Their bodies had been dumped near the scene of two of the fierce battles between rebel and regime forces in Tripoli.

“Come and see. These are blacks, Africans, hired by Gaddafi, mercenaries,” shouted Ahmed Bin Sabri, lifting the tent flap to show the body of one dead patient, his grey T-shirt stained dark red with blood, the saline pipe running into his arm black with flies. Why had an injured man receiving treatment been executed? Mr Sabri, more a camp follower than a fighter, shrugged. It was seemingly incomprehensible to him that anything wrong had been done.

The corpses were on the grass verges of two large roundabouts between Bab al-Aziziyah, Muammar Gaddafi’s compound stormed by the revolutionaries at the weekend and Abu Salim, a loyalist district which saw three days of ferocious violence. …

It is also the case that the regime has repeatedly unleashed appalling violence on its own people. But the mounting number of deaths of men from sub-Saharan Africa at the hands of the rebels – lynchings in many cases – raises disturbing questions about the opposition administration, the Transitional National Council (TNC) taking over as Libya’s government, and about Western backing for it.

The atrocities have apparently not been confined to Tripoli: Amnesty International [a nasty lefty organization which sometimes inadvertently tells the truth – JB] has reported similar violence in the coastal town of Zawiyah, much of it against men from sub-Saharan Africa who, it has been claimed, were migrant workers. …

Only a few of the dead found at the roundabouts yesterday were in uniform. However, regime forces have often worn civilian clothes during combat in Tripoli. The street-fighting for Abu Salim was particularly fierce with regime snipers taking a steady toll among the ranks of al-Shabaab volunteer fighters. The losses, and frustration at the continuing stubborn resistance by the enemy after an entry into the capital greeted with celebration by residents, has led to something approaching fury among some of the revolutionaries in the last few days.

“They were shooting at us and that is the reason they were killed,” said Mushab Abdullah, a 35-year-old rebel fighter from Misrata, pointing at the bodies. “It had been really tough at Abu Salim, because these mercenaries know that, without Gaddafi to protect them, they are in big trouble. That is why they were fighting so hard.”

His companion, Mohammed Tariq Muthar, counted them off on the fingers of his hand: “We have found mercenaries from Chad, Niger, Mali and Ghana, all with guns. And they took action against us.”

But, if the men had been killed in action, why did they have their hands tied behind their back? “Maybe they were injured, and they had to be brought to this hospital and the handcuffs were to stop them from attacking. And then something went wrong,” suggested Mr Abdullah.

What went wrong and stays wrong is the Arab culture, shaped by the Islamic ideology of cruelty and murder.

The Libyan rebels are no better and no worse than the savage regime they’re replacing.

Ghaddafi’s cruelty has been well documented. Here’s a titbit of information from CNN about a member of his family – what Aline, wife of his son Hannibal, did to their children’s nanny:

One of the staff told us there was a nanny who worked for Hannibal Gadhafi who might speak to us. He said she’d been burnt by Hannibal’s wife, Aline.

I thought he meant perhaps a cigarette stubbed out on her arm. Nothing prepared me for the moment I walked into the room to see Shweyga Mullah.

At first I thought she was wearing a hat and something over her face. Then the awful realization dawned that her entire scalp and face were covered in red wounds and scabs, a mosaic of injuries that rendered her face into a grotesque patchwork.

 

*

What do the Western powers expect of this new regime in Libya that they are helping to establish?

If the Europeans are expecting oil, okay, maybe they’ll get it. Libyans must sell oil to survive.

But what is America expecting? Gratitude?  From that blood-thirsty rabble?

Why yes, it seems so.

This is from Investor’s Business Daily:

So the U.S. just spent $1 billion to liberate Libya from terrorist rule only to have Libya’s new rulers thumb their noses at extraditing the Lockerbie bomber? Explain to us again what we’ve been doing in Libya.

Presumably, President Obama’s slapped-together NATO mission to aid Libya’s rebels was to rid that country of its mad-dog dictator, who was a one-man nexus for global terrorism. …

His biggest atrocity was his own: killing 270 innocent people, many of them Americans, in the 1988 bombing of Pan-Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Gadhafi’s on the run now, but his key man on Lockerbie, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, remains in a wealthy Tripoli neighborhood, incredibly enough because Libya’s new rulers have declared they won’t extradite him abroad to face justice.

“Extradition is what Gadhafi did,” the National Transition Council’s Justice Minister Mohammed al-Alagi said. “We will not give any Libyan citizen to the West.”

That’s some chutzpah coming from someone who’d be just another dead body in the street or a prisoner dangling from a meat hook had NATO not intervened on his behalf with airstrikes, training and aid since March.

It’s even more ungrateful because these rebels have made it clear they expect more military and humanitarian aid from the West.

Libya’s National Transitional Council chair Mustafa Abdul Jalil urged NATO at a meeting Monday in Qatar to continue its air campaign against Gadhafi’s forces. …

But with Libya’s rebels willfully sheltering one of the world’s worst terrorists — the latest report is he’s sick, a ruse Libyan officials used to get him prematurely released from a U.K. prison two years ago — it seems they aren’t interested in creating a new kind of democratic and law-abiding nation and ridding Libya of the taint of terrorism. …

Imagine that! Arab rebels including al-Qaeda not interested in democracy and getting rid of terrorism! What a revelation, what a shock!

Is the White House reminding the rebels that the U.S. taxpayers have just shelled out $1 billion to buy their freedom? Or that the U.S. has released several billion in Gadhafi’s oil assets abroad for their use? No.

There were plenty of good reasons to object to the NATO involvement in the Libyan rebellion, and perhaps the main one was that the rebels were an unknown quantity. With this refusal to release the Lockerbie bomber, they’ve shown their colors.

If the Obama administration doesn’t want to be seen as Uncle Sucker, it must make the Libyan rebels face consequences for their ingratitude.

Obama will do that? Oh, sure. Wait for it … … any moment now … …

In 1918 Australian troops liberated Damascus from Ottoman rule. An Arab contingent, led and misled by the romanticizing Englishman T.E.Lawrence, wanted to claim that they had achieved the victory. So the British ordered the Australians to withdraw and let the Arabs march in as if they were the conquerors.

The lie fostered the notion among the Arabs that they really were great warriors. This meant that when, thirty years later, a small ill-equipped ad hoc Israeli defense force beat the five Arab armies that attacked the new state, the Arabs felt not only humiliated but incredulous. The lie, as is the way with lies, did them no good.

The Europeans – the British at least – should have learnt their lesson then, that allowing the Arabs their false pretenses is a stupid and counter-productive policy.

But it seems they did not. It’s pretty obvious that something similar is happening now with the “capture of Tripoli by the rebels”.

In our recent post Sudden victory in Libya, we quoted this question asked by DebkaFile:

How did the ragtag, squabbling Libyan rebels who were unable to build a coherent army in six months suddenly turn up in Tripoli Sunday looking like an organized military force and using weapons for which they were not known to have received proper training? Did they secretly harbor a non-Libyan hard core of professional soldiers?

Now here’s the story that is supposed to answer such a question, cooked up (so we suspect) by AP and some wily Arabs, and swallowed whole by the Washington Post:

They called it Operation Mermaid Dawn, a stealth plan coordinated by sleeper cells, Libyan rebels, and NATO to snatch the capital from the Moammar Gadhafi’s regime’s hands.

Ah, so NATO did play a part. Well, everyone knows that NATO was assisting the rebels – with air-strikes, weaponry, intelligence. So what? Nothing new there.

It proceeds in the manner of pulp fiction:

It began three months ago when groups of young men left their homes in Tripoli and traveled to train in Benghazi with ex-military soldiers.

Ex-military, eh? But – soldiers of what nationality? Is care being taken here to hide the fact that NATO soldiers put their boots on Libyan ground and took charge of the rebel forces for an advance on Tripoli? After NATO had said they wouldn’t do such a thing? Perish the thought!

After training in Benghazi, the men would return to Tripoli either through the sea disguised as fishermen or through the western mountains.

A script ready for the big screen.

“They went back to Tripoli and waited; they became sleeper cells,” said military spokesman Fadlallah Haroun, who helped organize the operation.

He said that many of the trained fighters also stayed in the cities west of Tripoli, including Zintan and Zawiya, and waited for the day to come to push into the capital.

Operation Mermaid Dawn began on the night of August 21 and took the world by surprise as the rebels sped into the capital and celebrated in Green Square with almost no resistance from pro-Gadhafi forces.

Haroun said about 150 men rose up from inside Tripoli, blocking streets, engaging in armed street fights with Gadhafi brigades, and taking over their streets with check points.

See what tacticians these rebels are? What long-sighted and meticulous planners?

He said another 200 men [came] from Misrata.

But why did the armed Gadhafi troops melt away when the rebels drove through?

Would they fear a raggle-taggle rebel army?

Fathi Baja, head of the rebel leadership’s political committee, said it was all thanks to a deal cut with the head of the batallion in charge of protecting Tripoli’s gates, the Mohammed Megrayef Brigade.

His name was Mohammed Eshkal and he was very close to Gadhafi and his family.

Close to Gadhafi? Then why – ?

Ah, there was a reason. A secret grudge nursed for many and many a long year. So the plot thickens.

Baja said Gadhafi had ordered the death of his cousin twenty years ago.

“Eshkal carried a grudge in his heart against Gadhafi for 20 years, and he made a deal with the NTC — when the zero hour approached he would hand the city over to the rebels,” said Haroun.

“Eshkal didn’t care much about the revolution,” said Haroun. “He wanted to take a personal revenge from Gadhafi and when he saw a chance that he will fall, he just let it happen.”

But Haroun said he still didn’t trust Eshkal or the men who defected so late in the game.

Haroun said that he didn’t trust any of the defectors who left Gadhafi’s side so close to August 20.

“They knew his days were numbered so they defected, but in their hearts they will always fear Gadhafi and give him a regard,” he said.

Haroun said NATO was in contact with the rebel leadership in Benghazi and were aware of the date of Operation Mermaid Dawn.

Only “aware of it”. Did NATO have no active part in it?

Oh, yes, it did.  Haroun would not deny NATO had played a role.

“Honestly …

Savor that “Honestly”!

“Honestly, NATO played a very big role in liberating Tripoli — they bombed all the main locations that we couldn’t handle with our light weapons,” said Haroun.

And AP hastens to bear out the honest confession of Haroun by adding details anyone can check out:

Analysts have noted that as time went on, NATO airstrikes became more and more precise and there was less and less collateral damage, indicating the presence of air controllers on the battlefields.

Targeted bombings launched methodical strikes on Gadhafi’s crucial communications facilities and weapons caches. An increasing number of American hunter-killer drones provided round-the-clock surveillance as the rebels advanced.

Okay, that’s accepted. But that was all?  Any suspicion that European soldiers were on the ground would be wholly unfounded?

What if European foreign offices were to give out a different tale?

Diplomats acknowledge that covert teams from France, Britain and some East European states provided critical assistance.

Oh? Of what sort?

Well, quite a variety when we get down to it:

The assistance included logisticians, security advisers and forward air controllers for the rebel army, as well as intelligence operatives, damage assessment analysts and other experts, according to a diplomat based at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Only advisers, not trainers, mark you. But what if European military personnel were actually spotted among the rebels? Well,

Foreign military advisers on the ground provided key real-time intelligence to the rebels, enabling them to maximize their limited firepower against the enemy. One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the Qatari military led the way, augmented later by French, Italian and British military advisers.

So a foreign but Arab army was “augmented” by European advisers.

But only “later’. How much later? We’re not told, but they couldn’t have been too far behind considering the speed of the advance.

This effort had a multiple purpose, not only assisting the rebels but monitoring their ranks …

There’s a good word – “monitoring”. It implies “merely observing, merely taking note”.

… and watching for any al-Qaida elements trying to infiltrate or influence the rebellion.

Ah, watching for al-Qaida elements. That’s old policy, perfectly legitimate.

And besides, most of the observing was still being done from the air. Assistance given without the use of any actual Europeans at all:

Bolstering the intelligence on the ground was an escalating surveillance and targeting campaign in the skies above. Armed U.S. Predator drones helped to clear a path for the rebels to advance.

Baja said as the time for Operation Mermaid Dawn came close to execution, NATO began to intensify their bombing campaign at Bab al-Azizya and near jails where weapons were stored and political prisoners were held.

And then the people rose up.

The dramatization is brought to a climax with the last line.

We cannot prove – yet – that the story is a lie. But we are fairly persuaded that it is: a false account seasoned with little hints of the truth to allow the fibbers to say later if challenged, ‘But we said that NATO did this, and the British and French did that, and okay we may have left out details of what they actually did…” in a red-faced effort to minimize their deception.

The AP account serves only to confirm to us – contrary to what it wants readers to believe – that NATO troops were the commanders and effective fighters in the attack on Tripoli.

But it suits the US, Britain and France politically to pretend that it was a victory for the rebels, both in order to seem to be adhering to their declared limits of engagement, and also, most importantly, to make it seem that the Libyan people fought and won their own battle.

So yet again, Arab pride is boosted – truth be damned.

*

And here’s the latest DebkaFile report which, if it turns out to be accurate, would confirm our suspicions:

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that British, French, Jordanian and Qatari Special Operations forces Tuesday, Aug. 23, spearheaded the rebel “killer strike” on Muammar Qaddafi’s regime and Tripoli fortress at Bab al-Azaziya, Tripoli. This was the first time Western and Arab ground troops had fought together on the same battlefield in any of the Arab revolts of the last nine months and the first time Arab soldiers took part in a NATO operation.

Our military sources report that the British deployed SAS commandos and France, 2REP (Groupe des commando parachutiste), which is similar to the US Navy DELTA unit …

The main body of the rebels to the rear of the combined foreign force was nowhere near being a unified military force.

*

And one lie has already been exposed.

A story was put out by the rebels that Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, had been captured  – and then he appeared at a Tripoli hotel before foreign correspondents.

Even the Guardian was embarrassed by the apparent exposure of this lie. Its report is here:

There was no doubt about it: Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s second son and heir presumptive, had been captured. Mustafa Abdul Jalil, head of the rebels’ National Transitional Council (NTC), declared on Monday that he was “being kept in a secure place under close guard”. …

News of the supposed arrest, which came without a date or a location, was a huge boost for the rebel movement. …

Yet just hours later, journalists at the Rixos hotel in Tripoli were woken during the night by a knock at the door and told to go downstairs. There, inside a white armoured vehicle, with a mobile phone next to him and a smile playing around his lips, was Saif himself. …

The revelation that the man they had declared to be in captivity was in fact touring parts of regime-held Tripoli and doing the V-for-victory sign for a crowd of apparent supporters seemed to stun many rebels as much as it did the rest of the world. …

A spokesman for the NTC leadership, had no explanation of Saif’s sudden reappearance, and could say only: “This could all be lies.” …

The image it projects of the rebels is hardly flattering – and while Saif’s dramatic reappearance is far from the only occasion on which the international community has had reason to question the credibility of the fighters, this particular misstep could prove damning. …

A British spokesman hastened to excuse the liars.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, was keen to avoid chastising the NTC leadership. “I think it’s inevitable in this situation, with the warfare going on … that there will be some confusion.” …

We have a vision of the ghost of T.E. Lawrence hovering over Mr Mitchell in the BBC studio.

Here’s part of a report, with questions, conjectures, and comments, about the Libyan rebels’ capture of Tripoli.

It comes from DebkaFile, an Israeli source.

We can’t know how reliable it is, but the questions it asks are interesting:

Muammar Qaddafi’s regime fell in Tripoli just before midnight Sunday, Aug. 22. The rebels advanced in three columns into the heart of the capital after being dropped by NATO ships and helicopters on the Tripoli coast. Except for pockets, government forces did not resist the rebel advance, which stopped short of the Qaddafi compound of Bab al-Aziziyah.

After one of his sons Saif al Islam was reported to be in rebel hands and another, Mohammad, said to have surrendered, Qaddafi’s voice was heard over state television calling on Libyans to rise up and save Tripoli from “the traitors.” Tripoli is now like Baghdad, he said. For now, his whereabouts are unknown.

Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said 1,200 people had been killed in the 12 hours of the rebel push towards the capital. As he spoke, Libyan rebels, backed by NATO, seized control of the capital. After holding out for six months, the Qaddafi regime was to all intents and purposes at an end.

Still to be answered are seven questions raised here by DEBKAfile’s analysts:

1. Where are the six government special divisions whose loyalty to the Libyan ruler and his sons was never in question? None of the 15,000 trained government troops were to be seen in the way of the rebel advance into the capital. The mystery might be accounted for by several scenarios: Either these units broke up and scattered or Qaddafi pulled them back into southern Libya to secure the main oil fields. Or, perhaps, government units are staying out of sight and biding their time in order to turn the tables on the triumphant rebels and trap them in a siege. The Libyan army has used this stratagem before.

2. How did the ragtag, squabbling Libyan rebels who were unable to build a coherent army in six months suddenly turn up in Tripoli Sunday looking like an organized military force and using weapons for which they were not known to have received proper training? Did they secretly harbor a non-Libyan hard core of professional soldiers?

3. What happened to the tribes loyal to Qaddafi? Up until last week, they numbered the three largest tribal grouping in the country. Did they suddenly melt away without warning?

4. Does Qaddafi’s fall in Tripoli mean he has lost control of all other parts of Libya, including his strongholds in the center and south?

5. Can the rebels and NATO claim an undisputed victory? Or might not the Libyan ruler, forewarned of NATO’s plan to topple him by Sept. 1, have decided to dodge a crushing blow, cede Tripoli and retire to the Libyan Desert from which to wage war on the new rulers?

6. Can the heavily divided rebels, consisting of at least three militias, put their differences aside and establish a reasonable administration for governing a city of many millions? Their performance in running the rebel stronghold of Benghazi is not reassuring.

7. DEBKAfile’s military and counter-terror sources suggest a hidden meaning in Qaddafi’s comment that Tripoli is now like Baghdad. Is he preparing to collect his family, escape Tripoli and launch a long and bloody guerrilla war like the one Saddam Hussein’s followers waged after the US invasion of 2003 which opened the door of Iraq to al Qaeda?

If that is Qaddafi’s plan, the rebels and their NATO backers, especially Britain and France, will soon find their victory wiped out by violence similar to – or worse than – the troubles the US-led forces have suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

China is becoming militarily stronger, and the US militarily weaker.

An article in Investor’s Business Daily suggests that Obama is granting this alteration in the balance of power to the Chinese in exchange for their indulgence as the US’s chief creditors:

The White House suddenly announced it wouldn’t sell F-16 jets to Taiwan — a huge strategic favor to the Chinese. Was there a quid pro quo?

Explicitly or not, the U.S. seems to be offering them a deal — buy our bonds and pay for our out-of-control spending, and we’ll let you build a massive military presence and expand your influence in the Western Pacific.

China might see that as a good investment, one that will deliver them one of their much-cherished, long-term strategic goals: a weaker U.S. military.

That nation is already challenging the U.S., increasing defense spending at double-digit rates year after year, in what a U.S. Air Force website recently called “the most remarkable expansion of military power since the U.S. geared up for World War II” … is busy building a blue-water navy to challenge America, and just this month it launched its first aircraft carrier, with plans for more. It already has 2 million men under arms — a third more than the U.S.

At the same time, it’s building its unconventional warfare capabilities, extensively testing anti-satellite weapons and … engaging in a massive, five-year cyberattack on at least 50 U.S. government agencies and corporations.

China’s new generation of anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles, submarines, sophisticated new radar and minelayers is premised on … forcing us out of East Asia, leaving allies such as Taiwan, Japan and South Korea unprotected.

Some deal. They buy our bonds while we watch their defense buildup. Clearly, China’s preparing for conflict. What are we preparing for? National bankruptcy?

On China rising to space superiority, this report comes from the Heritage Foundation:

As NASA sends its shuttles to museums, China is making great strides in its space program—with preparations under way for the launch of a Chinese spacelab in the next few weeks. These advances are beginning to threaten U.S. space superiority and America’s ability to support its friends and allies and to deter aggression. …

In the past several years, China’s space efforts have become increasingly prominent. …

The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] has concluded that the high ground of space is essential to the information gathering, transmission, and exploitation necessary to fight and win future wars. …

As Beijing expands its space program, the United States must maintain and expand robust space capabilities, develop alternatives to space-based systems to reduce American vulnerability …  Only then will the United States be able to maintain its superiority in space …

Hasn’t that already been abandoned?  NASA’s mission now is “to improve relations with the Muslim world“, by order of President Obama.

Which will be worse, the US falling under Islam and sharia law, or China and communism?

To prevent either catastrophe, the US needs a president who will defend the nation – on earth and all around it.

We have written often and at length about the futility of continuing the US engagement in Afghanistan. (Put “Afghanistan” or “Taliban” into our search slot to find our numerous posts on the subject.)

AP now reports that hundreds of millions of US dollars have found their way into the hands of the Taliban.

After examining hundreds of combat support and reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan, the U.S military estimates $360 million in U.S. tax dollars has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has spent nearly a decade battling: the Taliban, criminals and power brokers with ties to both.

The losses underscore the challenges the U.S. and its international partners face in overcoming corruption in Afghanistan. A central part of the Obama administration’s strategy has been to award U.S.-financed contracts to Afghan businesses to help improve quality of life and stoke the country’s economy.

A nice clear demonstration of its political naivety.

But until a special task force assembled by Gen. David Petraeus began its investigation last year, the coalition had little insight into the connections many Afghan companies and their vast network of subcontractors had with insurgents and criminals – groups military officials call “malign actors.”

In a murky process known as “reverse money laundering,” payments from the U.S. pass through companies hired by the military for transportation, construction, power projects, fuel and other services to businesses and individuals with ties to the insurgency or criminal networks …

“Funds begin as clean monies,” according to one document, then “either through direct payments or through the flow of funds in the subcontractor network, the monies become tainted.”

The conclusions by Task Force 2010 represent the most definitive assessment of how U.S. military spending and aid to Afghanistan has been diverted to the enemy or stolen. …

Has it learnt its lesson from the discovery and grown wiser? No.

The Defense Department announced Monday that it had selected 20 separate contractors for a new transportation contract potentially worth $983.5 million … Officials said the new arrangement will reduce the reliance on subcontractors and diminish the risk of money being lost. Under the new National Afghan Trucking Services contract, the military will be able to choose from a deeper pool of companies competing against one another to offer the best price to move supplies. The new arrangement also gives the U.S. more flexibility in determining –

To determine something it is not flexibility that is required, just determination –

whether security is needed for supply convoys and who should provide it …

Security? How about American armed guards keeping cold eyes fixed on every one of the bastards?

And the Pentagon’s wondering who – if they decide for it – should provide it?  Does that mean they’re considering getting Afghans to do it? Oh yes!

The Pentagon did not provide the names of the 20 companies picked due to worries that larger contractors who weren’t selected might try to coerce them into a takeover, the senior defense official said.

Ah, canny, canny!

But about those security providers. Among a bunch of them named in the report, here’s one who is so surprisingly discovered to have been cheating:

In 2009 and 2010, [a] subcontractor identified in the document only as “Rohullah” received $1.7 million in payments. A congressional report issued last year said Rohullah is a warlord who controlled the convoy security business along the highway between Kabul and Kandahar, the two largest cities in Afghanistan. …

Rohullah’s hundreds of heavily armed guards operated a protection racket, charging contractors moving U.S. military supplies along the highway as much as $1,500 a vehicle. Failure to pay virtually guaranteed a convoy would be attacked by Rohullah’s forces … Rohullah’s guards regularly fought with the Taliban, but investigators believe Rohullah moved money to the Taliban when it was in his interest to do so. …

U.S. authorities in Afghanistan are screening contractors more carefully to be sure they can handle the work and also are trustworthy, the senior military official said. Authorities also are being more aggressive in barring companies if they violate contract terms or are found to be involved in illicit activities. Since the task force was created last year, the number of debarred Afghan, U.S. and international companies and individuals associated with contracting in Afghanistan has more than doubled – from 31 to 78, the official said.

And those not on the list may be presumed trustworthy?

Just how dumbly trusting and incurably naive the Western directors of the Afghan campaign are, here’s a reminder of how easily they were deceived by the Taliban last year. We quote from our post The Sting of Nov. 23 , 2010, concerning “a perfectly performed con-trick by which an imposter extracted a mountain of moola from craven double-dealing presidents, diplomats, and generals involved in The Endless War of Waste and Futility.”

The conman claimed to be Mullah Akhta Muhammad Mansour, “the second highest official in the Taliban movement” after the founder, Mullah Mohammed Omar.

He and “two other Taliban leaders” were flown to Kabul from Pakistan in a NATO plane, wearing serious beards, and were ceremoniously ushered into the presidential palace, where they proceeded to beard President Karzai in his den, so to speak. Then they were conducted to the city of Kandahar where “Mullah Mansour” and his two merry men hoodwinked government officials, NATO commanders, American diplomats and top-brass.

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

For “little” read “nothing”.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

American officials confirmed Monday that they had given up hope that the Afghan was Mr. Mansour, or even a member of the Taliban leadership.

Doubts about the man’s identity arose after the third session of negotiations. Only then –

A man who had known [the real] Mr. Mansour years ago told Afghan officials that the man at the table did not resemble him.

Even so, they wistfully hoped that whoever he was would come again. They’d paid him to keep the fake peace talks going, and any old talks, with anyone at all, are better than none.

So who was the guy they were negotiating with?

The theory we like best is that he was “a humble shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta”, who simply enlisted the help of two cronies and carried out the sting operation for the most understandable of motives – to get a lot of money. Which they did.

When will they ever learn?

Should America intervene in other countries when, for instance, a tyrant is mowing down thousands of his own people? Is it in America’s interest to transform despotisms and anarchic states into democracies – as the neoconservatives believe? Or should America ignore what is happening in the world at large unless it is directly threatened – as the isolationists believe?

Caroline Glick writes at Townhall:

In truth, the dominant foreign policy in the Republican Party, and to a degree, in American society as a whole is neither neoconservativism nor isolationism.

It is, she argues, what may be called Jacksonianism, after Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the US.

What are the essential ideas of Jacksonian foreign policy?

The US is different from the rest of the world and therefore the US should not try to remake the world in its own image by claiming that everyone is basically the same.

The US must ensure its honor abroad by abiding by its commitments and standing with its allies.

The US must take action to defend its interests.

The US must fight to win or not fight at all. The US should only respect those foes that fight by the same rules as the US does.

President Ronald Reagan, she says, “hewed closest to these basic guidelines in recent times”.

Reagan fought Soviet influence in Central America everywhere he could and with whomever he could find … exploited every opportunity to weaken the Soviet Union in Europe … deployed Pershing short-range nuclear warheads in Western Europe … called the Soviet Union an evil empire … began developing the Strategic Defense Initiative. And he walked away from an arms control agreement when he decided it was a bad deal for the US.

Throughout his presidency, Reagan never shied away from trumpeting American values. To the contrary, he did so regularly. However, unlike the neoconservatives, Reagan recognized that … the very notion that values trumped all represented a fundamental misunderstanding of US interests and the nature and limits of US power.

What would be the foreign policy of a Jacksonian president  now?  She takes one example, the revolutionary upheavals in the Arab lands:

He or she would understand that supporting elections that are likely to bring a terror group like Hamas or Hezbollah into power is not an American interest … that toppling a pro-American dictator like Mubarak in favor of a mob is not sound policy if the move is likely to bring an anti-American authoritarian successor regime to power … that using US power to overthrow a largely neutered US foe like Gaddafi in favor of a suspect opposition movement is not a judicious use of US power. Indeed, a Jacksonian president would recognize that it would be far better to expend the US’s power to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad — an open and active foe of the US and so influence the identity of a post-Assad government.

In her view, neoconservative policy was fine in theory, but in practice it brought unwanted consequences:

Broadly speaking, neoconservatives argue that the US should always side with populist forces against dictatorships. While these ideas may be correct in theory, in practice the consequence of Bush’s adoption of the neoconservative worldview was the empowerment of populist and popular jihadists and Iranian allies throughout the Middle East at the expense of US allies.

Hamas won the Palestinian Authority elections in 2006. Its electoral victory paved the way for its military takeover of Gaza in 2007.

Hezbollah’s participation in Lebanon’s 2005 elections enabled the Iranian proxy army to hijack the Lebanese government in 2006, and violently takeover the Lebanese government in 2009.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s successful parliamentary run in Egypt in 2005 strengthened the radical, anti-American, jihadist group and weakened Mubarak.

And the election of Iranian-influenced Iraqi political leaders in Iraq in 2005 exacerbated the trend of Iranian predominance in post-Saddam Iraq. …

Still, the neoconservatives’ “muscular” policy, intended to “advance the cause of democracy and freedom worldwide”, was preferable to isolationism, and far preferable to [what passes for] Obama’s foreign policy.

For all the deficiencies of the neoconservative worldview, at least the neoconservatives act out of a deep-seated belief that the US as a force for good in the world and out of concern for maintaining America’s role as the leader of the free world. In stark contrast, Obama’s foreign policy is based on a fundamental anti-American view of the US and a desire to end the US’s role as the leading world power. And the impact of Obama’s foreign policy on US and global security has been devastating.

From Europe to Asia to Russia to Latin America to the Middle East and Africa, Obama has weakened the US and turned on its allies. He has purposely strengthened US adversaries worldwide as part of an overall strategy of divesting an unworthy America from its role as world leader. He has empowered the anti-American UN to replace the US as the arbiter of US foreign policy. And so, absent the American sheriff, US adversaries from the Taliban to Vladimir Putin to Hugo Chavez to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are empowered to attack America and its allies.

A worse position with regard to US foreign relations could hardly be devised.

Is the damage repairable by a Republican president adopting Reagan-like – or “Jacksonian”  – ideas?

The ideas seem to us to be sensible enough. But much of what is happening in the world – partly as a result of the disastrous Obama presidency – has no precedent, and new threats will require new thinking.

Huge changes are looming up. The age of the nation-state seems to be passing. There’s a global trend back to tribalism. Will America alone be immune to it? Much of the world – perhaps a third of its population – is likely to be Muslim before the middle of the century.

In his new book  After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, Mark Steyn visualizes “the world after America” will be “more dangerous, more violent, more genocidal” – in a chapter ominously titled The Somalification of the World. But he does hold out some hope:

Americans face a choice: you can rediscover the animating principles of the American idea – of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the opportunity to exploit your talents to the fullest – or you can join most of the rest of the western world in terminal decline.

And he warns:

To rekindle the spark of liberty once it dies is very difficult.

But to do that must be the first task of a new president. Only a free, strong, prosperous America can be an effective power in the world, however it may decide to exert that power.

Last weekend, on August 6 – as reported  here –

U.S. Special Operations troops were closing in on a secret Taliban summit thought to include a high-value commander in Afghanistan’s rugged Tangi Valley when they ran into an insurgent patrol that pinned them down.

They asked for reinforcements, so-

Before dawn …  members of the elite U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six packed into a twin-rotor Chinook transport helicopter and rushed to the rescue …

As their Chinook was about to land … an insurgent shot it out of the sky with a rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG, in the deadliest attack endured by the American military in a decade of war in Afghanistan. Thirty U.S. special forces members were killed including members of SEAL Team 6 [the team that killed Osama bin Laden].

Immediate questions arise:

How did the Taliban pull it off? Why were the SEALs packed into an aging, slow-moving Chinook helicopter flying at low altitude? Were they on a mission only they could pull off or were they being overused to save a failed Afghan strategy? …

A strategy to achieve what? To change Afghanistan?

The impossibility of changing Afghanistan in the least degree, let alone turning it into a modern democratic state, could not be more clearly understood and vividly explained than it is by Daniel Greenfield in an article at Front Page:

Pedophilia, forced marriages, blasphemy trials and drug dealing. That is the real Afghanistan. The one that lingers on even when the Taliban are chased into the hills. That cannot be changed by American intervention because this is who its people are.

We might have been able to save Afghanistan from the Taliban, but we can’t save it from the Afghans. From the quarreling clans and warlords, the age old customs and the Islamic mores. Beyond a sliver of Western educated men and women in Kabul lies a land of a thousand cruelties and a million knives. With a vendetta around every corner and murder in every heart.

There is no Afghanistan, only a thousand divisions. The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan that replaced the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is an internationally funded mirage. A multi-billion dollar fund with its own flag and its own mercenaries. And because these mercenaries won’t fight, our soldiers go out to fight and die in their place.

Beneath that flag there is no unity. There are only divisions. Sunnis and Shiites. Pashtuns, Tajiks and Hazaras. Men and women. Groups with nothing in common except the Koran and the knife. …

Afghan jails are filled with women fleeing abusive marriages. Fleeing home carries with it a ten year jail sentence. The analogy to escaped slaves is as obvious and inescapable as a Muslim marriage. Adultery is the catch-all charge that can be leveled at a woman at any time, married or unmarried, a young girl or an elderly woman.

The Afghan man has three tools of power. Zan, Zar and Zamin. Women, gold and land. A man with many women will be able to breed many sons and expand his own clan. A man with a great deal of gold will be able to buy weapons and take his share of the drug and human trafficking networks. And a man with much land will have his own kingdom.

This elemental tribal power defines Afghanistan. Women are at the bottom of this pyramid. But so are minority ethnic groups. …

And on top of the bubbling kettle is Islam. No religion would be quite as fit for this backward tribalism as a religion that began as a warlord’s cult. Islam does not unify Afghanistan. For all that the Islamists imagine a Caliphate, Islam adds only another layer of division. Ethnic divisions in Afghanistan are also religious divisions. And Islam adds religious sanction to the oppression of women and the massacres of rivals.  …

Islam’s influence has only embedded the savagery deeper beneath its dusty skin. Everything that is bad in Afghanistan has its supporting verse in the Koran. The culture of the tribal raid, its emphasis on victory as proof of divine sanction and its contempt for women– finds its echo in the Koran. …

The tribal raider is unable to imagine any higher idea than the honor of his family. But Islam adds the idea of the meta-tribal identity. The Islamic Ummah as the ultimate tribe. It is an idea that allowed Mohammed and his successors to loot and pillage their way across much of the world. And the world is bleeding from a million wounds, stabbed, cut and pierced by the followers of that idea. …

20th century Islamists took the ugly tribal feud and globalized it. They took backward places like Afghanistan and turned them into platforms for a global war. We may be able to save ourselves from the puppet masters behind this shadow war, but we cannot save the Afghans from themselves.

Today Syrian state television showed human bodies and detached limbs floating down the Orontes River.

They are the remains of dead soldiers torn apart by protestors in Hama. Or so the state claims.

A more objective report identifies them differently:

They are the victims of Syrian tank fire and ZU-23 automatic anti-aircraft artillery trained on residential buildings and streets in the last 48 hours as the dead pile up …

Citizens cowering in their homes are throwing the dead out of windows and off roofs into the river. …

The dead are believed to be in the hundreds and rising all the time because the thousands of injured cannot be reached for medical care.

But the numbers of the dead and injured are not known, because the Syrian authorities have “cut off all the city’s ground and cell telephone and Internet links”, and “the satellite phones in the hands of some of the dissident leaders provide the only source of information on the situation in the embattled city.”

Assad has no reason to fear that any power or combination of powers will try to stop him slaughtering his own people by the thousands.

Turkish units had been waiting on the border to enter Syria, and possibly establish a refugee camp on Syrian territory to stop the flow of refugees into Turkey itself. But a few days ago all the chiefs of the Turkish army resigned, and the threat to Assad receded.

The UN will not actively intervene in Syria. Those passionate protectors of “human rights” are not easily distracted from their supreme task of censuring Israel.

The US Congress had exhausted its energies raising the US debt ceiling:

After the Senate … had approved the bill raising the national debt ceiling, the lawmakers were scheduled to turn to the crisis in Syria. However, US Ambassador Robert Ford, on hand to brief the senators, saw them hurrying to leave Capitol Hill.

Only one senator [Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA)] remained for the briefing.

Michael Ledeen writes:

There is no reason to believe that this administration grasps the dimensions of the world war in which we are engaged, like it or not. To look at Syria alone is a failure of strategic vision, because the battle of Syria is part of the larger conflict, involving our current major enemy Iran. Indeed, the Syrian slaughterhouse is a repeat performance of the earlier (and still ongoing) massacre in Iran, and is assisted (perhaps even instructed) from Tehran.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have a special force for operations outside Iran called the Al-Quds Force. (Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem.) It is assisting Assad in his attempts to crush the popular uprising. Iran has also lent him technicians to help identify and track down activists through their use of the Internet.

The Iranian tyrants tremble at the thought of a free Syria, since, as in Iran itself, the odds favor a successor regime that would devote its energies and depleted resources to the care and feeding of its own people [hmmm- JB] rather than to the support of terrorist proxies like Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and al-Qaeda. Moreover, the spectacle of the overthrow of Iran’s closest regional ally might well inspire the Iranian people to take to the streets once again against Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.

The Heritage Foundation comments:

The [Obama] Administration has a long way to go to correct its ill-advised efforts to seek better relations with a gangster regime that has murdered more than 1,400 of its own citizens in the last four months; thrown more than 12,000 in jail; served as Iran’s chief ally in the Middle East; supported a wide array of terrorists against the U.S. and its allies; and conspired with North Korea (and probably Iran) to illegally build a nuclear reactor designed to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon.

The collapse of the Obama Administration’s Syria policy is yet another example of how the Obama Doctrine has undermined U.S. national interests in a naïve effort to engage a despotic regime. Now that the Administration’s timid and weak policy toward Syria has emboldened the Assad regime to attack the U.S. embassy [on July 11], it is time for President Obama … to replace his myopic engagement strategy with meaningful efforts to help the Syrian people oust the predatory Assad regime.

But does he want to? Perhaps Senator Bob Casey could tell us.