P. Buchanan- The Prisoner of Gen. Petraeus

June 29th, 2010

The Prisoner of Gen. Petraeus

By Patrick J. Buchanan
President Obama is being hailed for toughness in his firing of Gen. McChrystal and brilliance in his replacing him as Afghan field commander with Gen. David Petraeus, who managed the George W. Bush “surge” in Iraq that saved this nation from an ignominious defeat.
Herewith, a dissent.
By firing a fighting general, beloved of his troops, Obama just took upon himself full responsibility for the McChrystal Plan. The general is off the hook.
As of now, the plan is not succeeding. And given the inability of Kabul to deliver the “government in a box” to Marja, after Marines supposedly de-Talibanized the town, the McChrystal Plan is failing. The Battle of Kandahar has not yet begun, though the June D-Day has come and gone.
Should we be in this same bloody stalemate in December, Obama will be blamed for having fired his field commander who devised his battle plan, and was carrying it out, over some stupid insults from staff officers to some counterculture magazine.
More critically, Obama just made himself hostage to a savvy general who is said to dream of one day holding Obama’s office.
Consider the box Obama just put himself in.
In 2009, he sacked Gen. David McKiernan and replaced him with his own man, Gen. McChrystal. Now, he has sacked McChrystal and replaced him with Petraeus.
The former community organizer and acolyte of Saul Alinsky cannot now possibly fire the most popular and successful general in the U.S. Army, who accepted a demotion to take command of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, without a firestorm that would consume his presidency.
If Obama has not noticed, the neocons, who want a “long war” in the Islamic world and a new war with Iran, are celebrating the Petraeus appointment with far greater unanimity than Obama’s own staff.
Why is the War Party celebrating? Petraeus is one of them.
And the untouchable general’s demands have begun to come in.
Clearly, Obama has been told he must back away from his declared deadline of July 31, 2011, for beginning withdrawals of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. And Obama is already moving to do so.
Vice President Joe Biden’s statement in Jonathan Alter’s “The Promise” that, “in July of 2011, you’re going to see a whole lot of people moving out, bet on it,” has already been challenged by Defense’s Robert Gates.
No such decision has yet been made, said Gates.
Look to Obama, soon, to walk back that July 2011 date and declare that any withdrawal of U.S. troops will be “conditions-based” — another way of saying that if we are not winning the war in July 2011, we are not coming home.
Here is the likely scenario.
At the December review of the Afghan war, Petraeus will argue that, while progress is being made, we cannot meet our goals by July 2011. Years more of combat will be required to win the war.
Petraeus will ask the president for more time, perhaps years more, and perhaps ask for more troops, 20,000 or 30,000, to complete the mission and ensure Afghanistan is not again a sanctuary for al-Qaida.
Thus, in December 2010, Obama becomes LBJ in December 1967, when Gen. William Westmoreland, with 500,000 troops in Vietnam, came to the White House to ask for 200,000 more. LBJ said no.
And as the Republican right hammered him for not bombing Hanoi and blockading Haiphong, Sens. Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy entered the primaries against him from the left.
Richard Nixon, saying five years of unsuccessful prosecution of a war called out for new leadership, was marching to the nomination of a party he had helped reunite after the Barry Goldwater disaster.
The outlook bleak, his party splintering, LBJ declared on March 31, 1968, that he would not run again.
If Obama repudiates his July 2011 date for first withdrawals of U.S. troops, if he agrees to any new Petraeus troop request, his party will split and he will face a primary challenge from the antiwar left.
But if he stands with Biden and says the July 2011 date holds, and the troops start home in July, Petraeus would likely put out word that his hands are being tied and he will not fight a no-win war.
Should Petraeus resign his command under such circumstances, he would become a Douglas MacArthur-like hero to the GOP, and could wind up as No. 2 on the ticket. And that could send Barack Obama home to Chicago.
Obama should have left McChrystal to succeed or fail with the McChrystal Plan. Had he succeeded, Obama also would have succeeded. Had he failed, Obama would have been free to relieve him and tell the nation: “We gave it our best shot, with our best general, with all the resources he requested. Regrettably, we did not succeed. Now we are coming home.”
That option was closed when he fired McChrystal and made himself the political prisoner of Gen. David Petraeus.
Brilliant.

INCREDIBLE! Jewish Democratic group asks syndicate to nix Pat Buchanan's column

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/98231-jewish-dems-want-buchanans-column-nixed

 Jewish Democratic group asks syndicate to nix Pat Buchanan's column
[ΕΧΟΥΝ ΑΠΟΘΡΑΣΥΝΘΕΙ ΤΕΛΕΙΩΣ!]


By Jordan Fabian - 05/17/10 04:17 PM 

ET

A group of Jewish Democrats wants a large newspaper syndicate to stop publishing conservative commentator Pat Buchanan's columns.
Buchanan found himself in hot water last week after he penned a piece saying that if Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is confirmed, the number of Jews on the Court will be highly disproportionate to the U.S. population.



The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) wrote a letter to Creators Syndicate asking it to take down the column and stop publishing him. "We ask that you pull down Buchanan's latest column from your website and that you stop publishing his over-the-top, conspiratorial screeds," it reads.


In the column, titled, "Are liberals anti-WASP?", Buchanan wrote: "If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats."


Several Jewish groups have long quarreled with Buchanan, accusing him of making anti-Semitic statements and being opposed to the state of Israel.


Buchanan has denied his remarks have been anti-Semitic and says he supports Israel. 


Here's the letter in full:
 


To Creators Syndicate:
 



Pat Buchanan has a history of Jewish obsession and anti-Israel rhetoric. Last week, you allowed him yet again to continue his fixation with Jews, this time criticizing President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, simply because she's Jewish.


The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) and its supporters strongly condemn Buchanan's column - "Are liberals anti-WASP?"


Religion [TO BE JEWISH IS ONLY A "RELIGION"? IT  IS NOT A NATIONALITY??] should never be a prerequisite for picking a Supreme Court nominee. 

Publishing Buchanan's fringe column gives him and his ideas validity. It's time to take a stand against this sort of intolerance in our country's political discourse.



We ask that you pull down Buchanan's latest column from your website and that you stop publishing his over-the-top, conspiratorial screeds.



During these challenging times, it is more important than ever that we hold ourselves to a higher standard. Help us end the practice of promoting ethnic and religious divisiveness by removing this ugly column today.

P. Buchanan-What Price Afghanistan?

VDARE.COM - http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/100617_afghanistan.htm June 17, 2010 What Price Afghanistan? By Patrick J. Buchanan   "The narrative ... has been too negative."  So says Defense Secretary Robert Gates of political and press commentary about the war in Afghanistan. It reminds him of the pessimism of June 2007, before the Iraqi surge began to succeed, said Gates. But the narrative is coming now not just from critics of the war but stalwart defenders. John McCain says the war effort could be headed for "crisis" and holds President Obama responsible for announcing a timetable for withdrawal starting next summer. And how optimistic can Americans be when, last month, in the ninth year of our longest war, the U.S. field commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, said the Taliban have fought us to a draw. Eight years ago, the Taliban seemed finished. Since then, we have poured in scores of thousands of troops, spent $300 billion, lost 1,000 soldiers and seen thousands more wounded. Yet, the Taliban have never been stronger or operated more broadly. Unfortunately, the narrative the Pentagon deplores is rooted in reality. The battle for Marjah, said to be a dress rehearsal for June's decisive Battle of Kandahar, appears not to have been the triumph advertised. The Afghan government and police failed to follow up and take over the Marjah district. The Taliban continue to execute those working with the Americans. Kandahar, with 800,000 people, is 10 times as populous as Marjah and the spiritual capital of the Taliban. And we now learn the Battle of Kandahar will not take place in June. Indeed, it is not going to be a battle at all, but a struggle for the hearts of the people, to persuade them to rise up against the Taliban, work with the Americans, and transfer their loyalty to Kabul and President Hamid Kharzi. The people of Kandahar apparently do not want U.S. protection any more than they want a battle for the city. And how can President Kharzi win their loyalty when his drug-lord brother, Wali Kharzi, is the Al Capone of Kandahar? As for President Kharzi himself, after a Taliban rocket attack on his loyal jirga, the national council, this month, he got rid of his interior minister and his intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, in the biggest shakeup of his time in office. Both men had strong ties to the Americans, and Kharzi is said to have suspected that their first loyalty was to the Americans. Shown evidence of the Taliban role in the attack on the loyal jirga, says Saleh, Kharzi told him he thinks the Americans were behind it. Kharzi, says Saleh, has lost all confidence that the United States and NATO have the perseverance to see the war through, and he is working in secret back channels to cut a deal with the Taliban. From Harvard researcher Matt Waldman of the London School of Economics, reported in the London Telegraph, comes the explosive charge that Pakistani Intelligence is now fully collaborating with the Taliban. [See The Sun in the Sky: the relationship between Pakistan's ISI and Afghan insurgents', (PDF)] On June 16, The New York Times reported that Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group behind the Mumbai massacre, is operating in Afghanistan, attacking Indian aid workers. Like the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba received early support from Pakistani intelligence. What is going on in Afghanistan? It appears that Pakistan, by maintaining ties to the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, wants to ensure that if and when the Americans do depart, as Obama signaled we would begin to do next July, Afghanistan will move into Islamabad's orbit, not New Delhi's. For the United States and NATO, however, casualties are rising to the highest levels of the war. June is shaping up as the bloodiest month ever. While Barack Obama has promised a review of U.S. strategy and policy in December, at the present rate, hundreds more young Americans will by then have given up their lives. For what? To succeed in creating in Afghanistan a country where the Taliban have been driven permanently from power and there is no chance of al-Qaida's returns, we need a government in Kabul and an Afghan army and police that can follow up U.S. military gains by taking control, protecting the population and providing social reforms. We don't have that government. We have, instead, a regime that has no confidence we will stay the course and is thus dealing behind our backs with the enemy who is killing our troops. It is simply not credible that the United States and its NATO allies, some of whom—like the Dutch—are pulling out, can prevail in this war in 12 months so America can begin coming home, as Obama has promised, unless Obama is willing to write Afghanistan off. If he is, he should tell us now and save those Americans lives. If he is not willing to see Afghanistan fall, he should tell us what it will take, and how long, to avoid a defeat and win this war. For saying the U.S. can succeed in the next 12 months in what we have failed to accomplish, at a rising cost in blood and money, for the last eight years, is not credible.

 

IMPORTANT:P.C.Roberts-Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

http://buchanan.org/blog/

june 8th, 2010

Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

From 2007
Paul Craig Roberts – CounterPunch

On October 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby’s bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. This legislation requires the US Department of State to monitor anti-semitism world wide.

To monitor anti-semitism, it has to be defined. What is the definition? Basically, as defined by the Israel Lobby and Abe Foxman, it boils down to any criticism of Israel or Jews.

Rahm Israel Emanuel hasn’t been mopping floors at the White House.
As soon as he gets the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 passed, it will become a crime for any American to tell the truth about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and theft of their lands.

It will be a crime for Christians to acknowledge the New Testament’s account of Jews demanding the crucifixion of Jesus.

It will be a crime to report the extraordinary influence of the Israel Lobby on the White House and Congress, such as the AIPAC-written resolutions praising Israel for its war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza that were endorsed by 100 per cent of the US Senate and 99 per cent of the House of Representatives, while the rest of the world condemned Israel for its barbarity.

It will be a crime to doubt the Holocaust.

It will become a crime to note the disproportionate representation of Jews in the media, finance, and foreign policy.

In other words, it means the end of free speech, free inquiry, and the First Amendment to the Constitution. Any facts or truths that cast aspersion upon Israel will simply be banned.

Given the hubris of the US government, which leads Washington to apply US law to every country and organization, what will happen to the International Red Cross, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and the various human rights organizations that have demanded investigations of Israel’s military assault on Gaza’s civilian population? Will they all be arrested for the hate crime of “excessive” criticism of Israel?

This is a serious question.

A recent UN report, which is yet to be released in its entirety, blames Israel for the deaths and injuries that occurred within the United Nations premises in Gaza. The Israeli government has responded by charging that the UN report is “tendentious, patently biased,” which puts the UN report into the State Department’s category of excessive criticism and strong anti-Israel sentiment.

Israel is getting away with its blatant use of the American government to silence its critics despite the fact that the Israeli press and Israeli soldiers have exposed the Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the premeditated murder of women and children urged upon the Israeli invaders by rabbis. These acts are clearly war crimes.

It was the Israeli press that published the pictures of the Israeli soldiers’ T-shirts that indicate that the willful murder of women and children is now the culture of the Israeli army. The T-shirts are horrific expressions of barbarity. For example, one shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a crosshairs over her stomach and the slogan, “One shot, two kills.” These T-shirts are an indication that Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians is one of extermination.

It has been true for years that the most potent criticism of Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians comes from the Israeli press and Israeli peace groups. For example, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Jeff Halper of ICAHD have shown a moral conscience that apparently does not exist in the Western democracies where Israel’s crimes are covered up and even praised.

Will the American hate crime bill be applied to Haaretz and Jeff Halper? Will American commentators who say nothing themselves but simply report what Haaretz and Halper have said be arrested for “spreading hatred of Israel, an anti-semitic act”?

Many Americans have been brainwashed by the propaganda that Palestinians are terrorists who threaten innocent Israel. These Americans will see the censorship as merely part of the necessary war on terror. They will accept the demonization of fellow citizens who report unpalatable facts about Israel and agree that such people should be punished for aiding and abetting terrorists.

A massive push is underway to criminalize criticism of Israel. American university professors have fallen victim to the well organized attempt to eliminate all criticism of Israel. Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at a Catholic university because of the power of the Israel Lobby. Now the Israel Lobby is after University of California (at Santa Barbara,) professor Wiliam Robinson. Robinson’s crime: his course on global affairs included some reading assignments critical of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

The Israel Lobby apparently succeeded in convincing the Obama Justice (sic) Department that it is anti-semitic to accuse two Jewish AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, of spying. The Israel Lobby succeeded in getting their trial delayed for four years, and now Attorney General Eric Holder has dropped charges. Yet, Larry Franklin, the DOD official accused of giving secret material to Rosen and Weissman, is serving 12 years and 7 months in prison.

The absurdity is extraordinary. The two Israeli agents are not guilty of receiving secrets, but the American official is guilty of giving secrets to them! If there is no spy in the story, how was Franklin convicted of giving secrets to a spy?

Criminalizing criticism of Israel destroys any hope of America having an independent foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American rather than Israeli interests. It eliminates any prospect of Americans escaping from their enculturation with Israeli propaganda.

To keep American minds captive, the Lobby is working to ban as anti-semitic any truth or disagreeable fact that pertains to Israel. It is permissible to criticize every other country in the world, but it is anti-semitic to criticize Israel, and anti-semitism will soon be a universal hate-crime in the Western world.

Most of Europe has already criminalized doubting the Holocaust. It is a crime even to confirm that it happened but to conclude that less than 6 million Jews were murdered.

Why is the Holocaust a subject that is off limits to examination? How could a case buttressed by hard facts possibly be endangered by kooks and anti-semitics? Surely the case doesn’t need to be protected by thought control.

Imprisoning people for doubts is the antithesis of modernity.

P. Buchanan:Misdemeanors — or Crimes?

june 7th, 2010

Misdemeanors — or Crimes?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

On this matter of offering federal jobs to potential candidates to induce them not to run against Senate Democratic incumbents, this White House is drifting dangerously close to the falls.

Colorado’s Andrew Romanoff has now confirmed that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina trolled three federal jobs in front of him, if he would desist and not run against incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet.

And Romanoff has produced an e-mail where Messina presents the three-job menu, one of which might be his, if he passed up the Senate run. Two were with the Agency for International Development. The third was director of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.

All three are juicy plums.

Romanoff and Messina both say no hard offer was made. And Robert Gibbs has assured the press the president had no idea Messina was talking to Romanoff about federal jobs that only Obama can fill.

But if Obama knew nothing of the Messina-Romanoff talks, who did? For Messina cannot appoint anyone to anything. Has Messina’s boss, Rahm Emanuel, been given the franchise to offer a dessert tray of federal jobs to people he wants to keep out of Democratic primaries?

An independent investigation needs to be conducted to determine whether Chicago-style politics has been introduced into the West Wing.

For in the week since White House Counsel Robert Bauer issued his two-page report on his investigation into whether Rep. Joe Sestak was offered a job to stay out of the Pennsylvania Senate primary, that report has become scarcely credible.

Consider. Repeatedly, Sestak said he had been offered a job if he would not run. The job was widely thought to be secretary of the navy. If true, Sestak was charging someone high at the White House with having committed a felony: offering a federal job to influence the outcome of a federal election.

What made the issue combustible was that only Obama can appoint the navy secretary. Though no one suggested Obama made the offer, the White House denied any offer had been made.

When Sestak won the primary, the media began to press. Sestak stonewalled, repeating only he was offered a job and turned it down.

Came then the report of Bauer, which purported to clear up the conflicting statements.

What had happened, we were told, was that President Clinton, at the behest of Rahm, called Sestak to urge him not to run against Arlen Specter, but to stay in the House, adding that Joe might serve on the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

Sestak hastily confirmed that this was the “job” he had been offered — in a one-minute exchange in a single conservation with Clinton.

No one else, says Sestak, contacted him with any offer any time.

Bauer’s report appeared to put the matter to rest. For PFIAB is a non-paying advisory board. Thus, Sestak had not really been offered a job, and even the seat on the PFIAB board had been but a suggestion by Clinton.

The story has now begun to crumble.

First, a seat on the prestigious PFIAB, with access to the nation’s secrets and a valid claim to be an adviser to the president, is certainly a thing of value. For the White House to offer it to get Sestak not to run would appear a clear violation of the anti-bribery statute.

Second, as columnist Byron York reports, members of Congress are not permitted to sit on presidential boards. Clinton was suggesting that Sestak take a slot on PFIAB, which Joe could not take as long as he stayed in Congress, which Clinton was urging him to do.

Is it possible Rahm and Clinton did not know of this prohibition?

Another problem has arisen with the Bauer report. Sestak insists the one-minute chat with Clinton was it. Not before, not during the Clinton call, not after, did anyone from the White House talk to him about not running.

But the report says “efforts” were made to determine if Sestak would be interested in serving on a presidential board “in June and July of 2009.”

This suggests multiple White House contacts with Sestak.

Who else talked to Joe? Another emissary like Clinton? What arguments did they use to persuade Sestak not to run, if they did not offer him something? For Joe was deeply angered at having been passed over by the White House in his planned run for a Senate seat in favor of a GOP reject like Arlen Specter.

The White House claims Obama knew nothing about any of this.

But is it credible that White House Chief of Staff Rahm colluded with ex-President Clinton to get Sestak out of the Pennsylvania Senate race and the president of the United States was left in the dark?

Not to be a cynic, but the Rahm-Clinton-Sestak-PFIAB story rings of a concoction upon which all agreed — to get the White House off the sticky wicket onto which Joe’s earlier honesty had placed the West Wing.

This thing could metastasize, big-time.

P. Buchanan: Lift the Siege of Gaza

June 03, 2010

Lift the Siege of Gaza

By Patrick J. Buchanan

In June 1948, our wartime ally imposed a blockade on Berlin, cutting off and condemning to death or Stalinist domination 2 million Germans, most of whom, not long before, had cheered Adolf Hitler.

Harry Truman responded with the Berlin airlift, in perhaps the most magnanimous act of the Cold War.

For nine months, U.S. pilots flew into Tempelhof, carrying everything from candy to coal, saving a city and earning the eternal gratitude of the people of Berlin, and admiration everywhere that moral courage is admired.

That was an America that lived its values.

And today, President Obama should end his and his country's shameful silence over the inhumane blockade of Gaza that is denying 1.5 million beleaguered people the basic necessities of a decent life.

Time to start acting like America again.

That bloody debacle in the Eastern Mediterranean last Sunday was an inevitable result of Israel doing what it always seems to do: going beyond what is essential to her security, to impose collective punishment upon any and all it regards as hostile to Israel.

Israel claims, and film confirms, that its commandos rappelling down onto the Turkish ship were attacked with sticks and metal rods. One was tossed off a deck, another tossed overboard into a lifeboat.

But that 2 a.m. boarding of an unarmed ship with an unarmed crew, carrying no munitions or weapons, 65 miles at sea, was an act of piracy. What the Israeli commandos got is what any armed hijacker should expect who tries to steal a car from a driver who keeps a tire iron under the front seat.

And the response of these highly trained naval commandos to the resistance they encountered? They shot and killed nine passengers, and wounded many more.

But we have a blockade of Gaza, say the Israelis, and this flotilla was a provocation. Indeed, it was. And Selma was a provocation. The marchers at Edmund Pettus Bridge were disobeying orders of the governor of Alabama and state police not to march.

Yet, today, liberal Democrats who regard Martin Luther King as a moral hero for championing nonviolent civil disobedience to protest injustice are cheering not the unarmed passengers trying to break the Gaza blockade, but the Israelis enforcing the blockade.

Where were these fellows when "Bull" Connor really needed them?

Comes the retort: Israel is a friend and ally, and we stand with our friends.

But is not Turkey a friend and ally of 50 years, whose soldiers died alongside ours in Korea and who accepted Jupiter missiles targeted on Russia, even before the Cuban missile crisis? Was it not Turkey whose citizens were wounded and killed in the bloody debacle?

Why are we not at least even-handed between our friends?

On the trip to Israel where he was blindsided by news that Israel would build 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, Joe Biden told Shimon Peres, "There is absolutely no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel's security."

And that is the problem.

America is a superpower with interests in an Arab world of 300 million and an Islamic world of 1.5 billion -- interests Israel treats with indifference if not contempt when it comes to doing what she regards as necessary for her security.

While Israel had a right to build a wall to protect her people from terror attack, did she have a right to build it on Palestinian land?

While Israel had a right to go after Hezbollah when her soldiers were shot on the border and several kidnapped, did Israel have a right to conduct a five-week bombing campaign that smashed Lebanon, killing hundreds of civilians and creating upward of a million refugees?

While Israel had a right to go into Gaza to stop the firing of crude rockets on Sderot, did she have a right to smash utilities and public buildings and kill 1,400 people, most of them civilians?

Is whatever Israel decides to do in the name of her security fine with us, because there is "absolutely no space"between our interests and hers, our values and Israel's values?

Even with Winston Churchill's Britain, there was "space" between us on strategic goals and national policies.

Israel has a right to secure Gaza to deny Hamas access to weapons, especially rockets that could reach Israel. But that does not justify denying 1.5 million people what they need to live in decency.

According to The Washington Post, "80 percent of the population (of Gaza) depends on charity. Hospitals, schools, electricity systems and sewage treatment facilities are all in deep disrepair."

With our silence, we support this. And we wonder why they hate us.

Obama should tell the Israelis that Joe got it wrong. There is space between us. The Gaza siege must end. And America will herself be sending aid, but will also support Israel's right to inspect trucks and ships to see to it no weapons get through to Gaza.

Let's start behaving like who we once were.

P. Buchanan: Remembering Wars and Warriors

Patrick J. Buchanan Archive

May 28, 2010

Remembering Wars and Warriors

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Since America became a nation, four of her greatest generals have served two terms as president: George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant and Dwight David Eisenhower.

Not one of these generals led America into a new war.

Washington was heroic in keeping the young republic out of the wars that erupted in Europe after the French Revolution, as were his successors John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Jackson, arguably America's greatest soldier—who won the Battle of New Orleans, which preserved the Union, and virtually annexed Florida—resisted until his final days in office recognizing the Republic of Texas, liberated by his great friend and subaltern Sam Houston.

Jackson wanted no war with Mexico.

Eisenhower came to office determined to end the war in Korea. In six months, he succeeded—and kept America out of the raging war in Indochina.

Of the men who led us into our 19th century wars—the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War—only one, William McKinley, was a soldier who had seen combat.

McKinley had enlisted at 17. In 1862, he was with the Union army at Antietam, the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil.

Though derided as having "the backbone of a chocolate eclair" by the bellicose Theodore Roosevelt, McKinleyconfided to a friend before going to war with Spain: "I have been through one war. ... I have seen the dead piled up. I do not want to see another."

James Madison, who took us into the War of 1812, which came close to tearing apart the Union; James Polk, who took us to war with Mexico and gave us Texas to the Rio Grande, the Southwest and California; and Abraham Lincoln, who led the nation in its bloodiest war, were politicians. Lincoln had served three months in the Illinois Militia in the Black Hawk War, but he never saw action.

America was led into the world wars by Woodrow Wilson, a professor, and Franklin Roosevelt, a politician. Harry Truman, who took us into Korea, had captained an artillery battery in France in 1918. John F. Kennedy, who led us into Vietnam, had served on a PT boat in the Solomons. George H.W. Bush, who launched Desert Storm, was one of the youngest Navy pilots to fight in the Pacific war.

While Americans this Memorial Day put flags out for all of their war dead, the arguments do not cease over the wisdom of the wars in which they fought and died.

In the grammar and high schools we attended in the 1940s and early 1950s, they were all good wars, all just wars, all necessary wars. Perhaps that is how it should be taught to America's children.

Yet, if the Revolution was a great and good cause, men fighting for freedom and nationhood, the War of 1812, where we were a de facto ally of Napoleon, seems a less noble endeavor. For among our motives was seizing Canada while the Mother Country was diverted.

Though deplored today, the Mexican War was not an unjust war.

Far from stealing Mexican territory after our victory, we paid for it, and the Mexicans, five years later, agreed to the Gadsden Purchase and offered to sell us Baja California. The greed was in Mexico City.

As for America's Civil War, this quarrel will never end. Did not the South have the same right to secede from the Union as the 13 colonies did to secede from England? Did Lincoln have the right to use blockade and invasion to drive Old Dixie down? His predecessor James Buchanan did not think so.

Was the Civil War essential to ending slavery, when many states had already abolished it by legislation and every nation in the hemisphere ended it without a civil war, save for Haiti?

The Spanish-American War, begun over a falsehood—that Spain blew up the USS Maine in Havana harbor—ended with American soldiers and Marines fighting for years to deny Filipinos the freedom for which our fathers fought in the Revolution. Cuba was liberated, but the Philippines, 10,000 miles from Washington, was annexed. That was an imperial war.

In 1917, we declared war on Germany "to make the world safe for democracy." And our major allies were four of the largest empires on earth: the British, French, Russian and Japanese. We deposed the Kaiser, and got Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler and World War II.

As a result of these world wars, all the Western empires fell, and Western Civilization began its inexorable advance to the grave. 

Impending bankruptcy aside, not one Western nation has a birth rate that will enable its native-born to survive many more generations. We did it to ourselves.

About Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan—and the presidents who fought those wars, LBJ, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush—the divisions are still deep and emotions raw. Today is not the time to re-fight them, but to honor and pray for the patriots who, throughout our history, did their duty, fought and died in them. Requiescant in pace.

P. Buchanan:Take the Deal With Iran, Mr. President

VDARE.COM - http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/100520_iran.htm May 20, 2010 Take the Deal With Iran, Mr. President By Patrick J. Buchanan If Barack Obama is sincere in his policy of "no nukes in Iran—no war with Iran", he will halt this rude dismissal of the offer Tehran just made to ship half its stockpile of uranium to Turkey. Consider what President Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah himself have just committed to do. Iran will deliver 1,200 kilograms, well over a ton, of its 2-ton stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Turkey. In return, Iran will receive, in a year, 120 kilograms of fuel rods for its U.S.-built reactor that produces medical isotopes for treating cancer patients. Not only did Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Lula da Silva of Brazil put their prestige on the line by flying to Tehran, the deal they got is a near-exact replica of the deal Obama offered Iran eight months ago. Why is President Obama slapping it away? Does he not want a deal? Has he already decided on the sanctions road that leads to war? Has the War Party captured the Obama presidency? If Iran ships the LEU to Turkey, she would be left with only enough low-enriched uranium for one test explosion. And as that LEU is under U.N. surveillance, America would have a long lead time to act if Iran began to convert the LEU to weapons grade. How is the Iranian program then an "existential threat" to anyone? Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons—America thousands. Critics say Iran still refuses to shut down the centrifuges turning out low-grade uranium. But if Iran stops the centrifuges, she surrenders her last bargaining chip to get sanctions lifted. Critics say Iran is trying to abort Hillary Clinton's campaign to have the Security Council impose a fourth round of sanctions. Undeniably true. But if the purpose of sanctions is to force Iran to negotiate its nuclear program, they are already working. Tehran's latest offer represents real movement. Critics say Iran will weasel out if we take up the deal. Perhaps. Internal opposition caused Ahmadinejad to back away from Obama's original offer, after he had indicated initial acceptance. But, if so, Iran will be seen as duplicitous by Turkey and Brazil. To the world today, the United States appears enraged that Iran is responding to America's own offer, that it is we who do not want a peaceful resolution, that we and the Israelis are as hell-bent on war and "regime change" in Iran as George W. Bush was on war and regime change in Iraq. While the Brazilians and Turks have surely complicated Hillary's diplomacy, their motives are not necessarily sinister or malevolent. Lula may be trying to one-up Obama and win a Nobel Prize as he leaves office. But what is wrong with that? Bill Clinton had a Nobel in mind when, in his final days, he went all-out for a Palestinian peace. And Erdogan leads a country that cannot wish to see Iran acquire nuclear weapons. For Shia Iran shares a border with Sunni Turkey, and the two are rivals for influence in the Islamic world and Central Asia. Moreover, an Iranian bomb would force Turkey to consider a Turkish bomb. Erdogan thus has every incentive to seek a resolution of this crisis, to keep Iran free of nuclear weapons, and avert a war between yet another neighbor and his NATO ally, the United States. If Obama refuses to take the Iranian offer seriously, it would appear a sure sign that the War Party has taken him into camp and he is departing the negotiating track for the confrontation track that leads to war. Months ago, Time's Tony Karon asked the relevant question: "What if Ahmadinejad is serious?" And there are obvious reasons why he might want a deal. First, Iran runs out of fuel this year for its reactor that produces medical isotopes. And despite Tehran's braggadocio about making fuel rods itself out of its existing pile of uranium, there is no evidence Tehran is technically capable of this. Iranians dying of cancer because Ahmadinejad failed to get those fuel rods would create enmity toward him, as well as hatred of us for denying them to Iranian cancer patients. Second, as the U.S. intelligence community yet contends, there is no hard evidence Iran has decided to go nuclear. For this would instantly put Iran in the nuclear gunsights of the United States and Israel. And what benefit would Shia and Persian Iran, half of whose population is non-Persian, gain by starting a nuclear arms race in a region that is predominantly Arab and Sunni? Third, Ahmadinejad leads a nation that is united in insisting on all its rights under the Nonproliferation Treaty, including the right to enrich. But his nation is deeply divided over his regime's legitimacy after last June's flawed, if not fixed, election. If the United States were to accept Iran's counter-offer, it would be a diplomatic coup for Ahmadinejad. Maybe that's the problem. The Powers That Be don't really want a deal with Iran. They want Iran smashed.

Pat Buchanan-Economic Nationalism—Will the PIGS Blow Up Europe?

Patrick J. Buchanan Archive

May 17, 2010

Economic Nationalism—Will the PIGS Blow Up Europe?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Among the mega-forces moving the tectonic plates and imperiling the nation-states of the world from above and below are these:

First, ethno-nationalism, which threatens nations with secession and break-up. We see it in the Uighurs of China,the Naga of India, the Baluch of Iran and Pakistan, the Kurds of Iran, Syria, Iraq and Turkey, the Chechens of the Russian Caucasus and the Walloons of Belgium.

Second, transnationalism. This is the project of global elites who seek to reduce nations to ethno-cultural enclaves in a new world order run by these same bloodless bureaucrats whose loyalty is neither to the land nor people whence they came.

Their work in progress, the European Union, however, is imperiled.

For the EU just took a great leap forward to force Europe's most indebted nations to surrender their economic independence or be expelled from the European Monetary Union. The PIGS—Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain—may rebel.

Indeed, we may see cascading rebellions across Europe recalling 1848, but with a different outcome.

What brought the EU to this day of reckoning is its decision to go for a trillion-dollar bailout of Greece, Portugal and Spain rather than let them default or restructure their debts. These nations are now being directed by the EU and International Monetary Fund to slash public spending and raise taxes, though all suffer from high unemployment, with Spain's at 20 percent.

If Berlin gets its way, these nations may also be forced to submit their budgets in advance to Brussels and accept EU-dictated limits on the deficits they will be permitted to run. This would entail a sweeping surrender of sovereignty, independence and economic freedom.

Moreover, as the pain of this "rescue" is to be borne by the debtors, while the beneficiaries are the French and German banks that hold tens of billions in PIG paper, this question arises: Why should Athens make Greeks suffer and risk political ruin at the polls, rather than default and let the banks and bondholders of Europe share in the pain?

Why not quit the EMU, default, repudiate the euro, restore the drachma and devalue? That would make Greek exports more competitive and make Greece a more desirable place in which to site one's next factory. And with its currency devalued, Greece would also become a more attractive destination for Western tourists.

But a Greek default is not the only threat to the EU.

The European Central Bank has been buying Greek debt from the banks both to relieve them of the risk of a default and to restore market confidence in Greek, Portuguese and Spanish bonds. Only when such confidence returns will investors buy new debt from the Club Med countries, all of which must issue new bonds to finance deficits and roll over maturing debt.

A problem, however, has also arisen here. As the ECB is buying up the debt of the PIGS, holders of Greek, Spanish and Portuguese bonds are unloading them, getting out of Club Med paper while the getting is good.

The ECB seems to be substituting itself for the banks as the chump to be left holding the bag when the defaults begin.

The plunging euro is a sure sign the markets are coming to see that the only way the bonds of indebted European nations are going to be paid off is with a huge infusion of euros, which may end that currency's status as a reliable store of value.

However, "if the euro fails, it is not only the currency that fails," says German Chancellor Angela Merkel."Then Europe fails. The idea of European unity fails."

Especially enraged are the Germans. To show that they were good Europeans, they gave up their beloved mark. Now, in recent elections in North-Rhine Westphalia, the Christian Democratic Union of Merkel took a thrashing, falling 10 points below the CDU's 2005 vote, and losing the upper chamber of the German parliament.

Germans may be ready to shed the sackcloth and ashes they have worn for 65 years and start looking out for Deutschland uber alles.

Given the strains on the European Monetary Union and EU, neither of which enjoys the love or loyalty that people render to the countries of their birth, the great unraveling may be about to begin. Why, after all, should the indebted nations of Europe impose suffering upon their peoples to pay off old debts now held by distant banks?

How does imposing austerity on Portugal, Spain and Greece enable them to grow their way out of indebtedness? How does it help the EU grow if a large slice of the union is forced into austerity?

And why should Germans who pay themselves modest pensions and hold off retirement put their savings at risk to bail out the Club Med?

Many have predicted that economic nationalism would one day tear apart the European Union. The hour may be at hand.