Does Misurata Make Intervention Worthwhile?

I love this Photoshopped image (grabbed from Lion of the Desert?) from this week's Economist. We are entering the "Oh my god what have we signed up for?" stage of of the Libya war, after February and March's hope that Qadhafi was a low-hanging fruit and that he would fall just like Ben Ali and Mubarak did. I am still conflicted, somewhere between Anthony Cordesman (finish the job) and Helena Cobban (never should have gone in the first place). Both come, of course, from a point of view critical of liberal (or neocon) interventionism, although for different reasons. So does Steve Walt. The other question in my mind is about whether early French (followed by other Western) support for the rebels emboldened them to fight a war they couldn't win, relying on help from abroad, and now puts them in a position where they will not negotiate.

The Economist makes the case for more involvement, esp. US, and that Misurata is crucial to the rebels:

Apart from the humanitarian crisis in Misrata, the city—the country’s third largest with a population of more than 500,000 and an important port—is strategically vital. As long as it holds out, it prevents Colonel Qaddafi from imposing a de facto partition between west and east and provides encouragement to the opposition in other western towns, such as Zintan and Zawiya, and even in those parts of Tripoli, the capital, that briefly rose up in the early days of the revolution.

Tough questions all. But I love the way Sarkozy looks on this pic — like Louis de Funes.
The Arabist

Obama is Behind Cameron's Attacks on Israel

Obama’s Behind Cameron’s Attack on Israel
by Pamela Geller
Human Events
08/06/2010


British Prime Minister David Cameron in Turkey last week slammed Israel and called Gaza a “prison camp.” (Apparently Gaza is the first prison camp with luxury shopping malls.)

The British Foreign Office has been taking the blame for this betrayal of Israel, but they’re claiming they were as surprised as anyone. Now, a high-placed and knowledgeable source has informed me that it was Obama’s people who put the slamming of Israel into Cameron’s speech.

Cameron said that “the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable.”


He didn’t mention the ties of the Turkish-backed IHH “activists” on the flotilla to global-jihad terror groups. He didn’t mention that the “activists” on the Turkish flotilla, the Mavi Marmara, were chanting, “Khaibar, Khaibar, O Jews, the army of Muhammad will return”—a chant that refers to Muhammad’s massacre of the Jews at the Arabian oasis of Khaibar.

Now we learn that it was the Obama camp that put Cameron up to this. That should come as no surprise, as Obama himself said that Israel’s defensive action against the jihad flotilla was “tragic.”

Just as Blair was Bush’s “puppy,” Cameron is Obama’s lapdog.

Obama’s using Cameron as his sock puppet points once again to Obama’s obsession with undermining the Jewish state. Obama is doing nothing less than warring against Israel.

When Sean Hannity asked me on his show Tuesday night if I thought Obama was an anti-Semite, I said yes. He is. It sounds harsh. But the evidence is clear and extensive: it’s all meticulously researched and set out in my book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War On America, which is just out this week.

In the book, I profile Obama’s many anti-Israel playmates: not just Jeremiah Wright, but also Rashid Khalidi (who is also tied to the jihad flotillas and just named a new one after Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope).

I expose the blatant Judeophobia of the terrorist couple Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn in their book Prairie Fire.

It is increasingly clear that the Islamic anti-Semitism taught in the Koranic classes of Obama’s youth in Indonesia and the subsequent adult years he spent with the likes of demagogues and Jew-haters like Wright, Ayers, and Louis Farrakhan have made him the man he is.

Now that Obama is in the White House, he is taking this Jew-hatred to a whole new level, bringing it to the international stage. In the book, I give the details of a little-noticed but pivotal Obama speech that former UN Ambassador John Bolton called “the most radical anti-Israel speech I can recall any President making.”

In The Post-American Presidency, I give the shocking details of how, during the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama’s website, Organizing for America, hosted a series of vile anti-American, Jew-hating posts and pieces.

The anti-Semitic onslaught was overwhelming. It included numerous, heinous calls for Jewish genocide and incitement to hatred. And it continued after the election, into the fall of 2009—on the official website of the man who supposedly is the leader of the free world, and who has editorial control over the website.

And now Obama’s relentless persecution of the Jews by way of an anti-Semitic approach to Israel has now reached a fever pitch with the lines he has fed to his willing stooge David Cameron.

One Israeli intelligence official summed up Obama’s policy toward his country in a nutshell: “Obama wants to make friends with our worst enemies and until now the worst enemies of the United States. Under this policy, we are more than irrelevant. We have become an obstacle.”

An obstacle, but to what goal?

It will only get worse for the tiny Jewish state. And as I show in The Post-American Presidency, everyone who voted for Obama should have seen all this coming. The warnings were clear. They were ignored. The price will be high.

Cameron is Worse than Brown

He's Worse Than Brown

The Brits can't catch a break. I never thought I'd say it, but despite having defeated the leftist Brown and elected the Conservative party candidate, David Cameron, who would have thought he'd be .....worse.

Yesterday Cameron made shocking and disastrous remarks, the implications of which are disastrous for freedom-loving peoples of the world. First, Cameron's vigorous insistence that Turkey be granted membership in the EU. Turkey would be the first Muslim majority country granted admittance into the EU. This would, in one stealth action, result in the radical islamization of the EU. Larger states have more votes than smaller ones in the EU and Turkey would be the largest, most populated country in the organization.

When decisions are not being taken by consensus, votes are weighted so that a country with a greater population has more votes within the Council than a smaller country (although not exact, smaller countries have more votes than their population would allow relative to the largest countries) .....more here

Fait accompli.

Further, EU members must have democratic, free market governments together with the corresponding freedoms and institutions, and respect the rule of law. Clearly Turkey's continued aggressive hostilities with Greece and Cyprus preclude that. And the rapid re-islamization of Turkey, the move away from Ataturk's reforms of secularization, should make Turkey's denial of membership a foregone conclusion.

Cameron speaks of "an extreme" Islam, what he actually is referring to is pure Islam, original Islam. Prime Minister of Turkey Erdogan said back in 2007,

"First of all, the 'moderate Islam' concept is wrong. The word 'Islam' is a simple word -- it is only Islam. If you say 'moderate Islam,' then an alternative is created, and that is 'immoderate Islam.' I cannot accept such a concept as a Muslim"

And he said this:

"The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and Muslims our soldiers…” said the Prime Minister of the increasingly Islamic Turkey Recipe Tayyip Erdogan, as he publicly read an Islamic poem.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's position is that the EU should offer Turkey a "privileged partnership" instead of full membership. Turkey has dismissed that offer. French President Nicolas Sarkozy also opposes Turkey joining the EU. And rightly so.

Turkey must join EU, says Cameron: 'Those who are against are playing on fears of Islam'

David Cameron today accused critics of Turkey’s membership of the EU of playing on fears of Islam - as he pledged to ‘pave the road from Ankara to Brussels’.

In a speech in the Turkish capital the Prime Minister promised to ‘fight’ to help the Islamic state achieve its 50-year goal of EU membership.

He said that, by embracing the moderate Muslim nation, the EU can improve relations with the rest of the Islamic world.

And he hit out at those who ‘wilfully misunderstand Islam’ in order to oppose Turkey’s membership.

He said: ‘They see no difference between real Islam and the distorted version of the extremists.

‘They think the values of Islam can never be compatible with the values of other religions, societies or cultures.

‘All these arguments are just plain wrong. I want us to be at the forefront of an international effort to defeat them.’

Mr Cameron’s words put him at odds with France, Germany and Tory Right-wingers who believe Turkey may be incompatible with the EU.

EU countries are in a position to use their veto to block a move for Turkish accession. But they are now coming under pressure from the U.S. as well as Britain.

The Prime Minister hit out at ‘protectionists’ who see Turkey as an ‘economic threat’.

And he criticised those who see the world as a ‘clash of civilisations’ in which Turkey must choose sides.

So do we not defend our civilization? Do we just acquiesce? Is this what the Brits elected when they ushered in the new era of the Conservatives?

But Cameron did not stop there. He launched into an attack on the Jews (what Muslim trip is complete without a good dose of Islamic anti-semitism?).
Did Cameron not see the the video? Did Cameron not view the bloody attacks on the Jewish soldiers? Is Jewish self defense now a crime in the modern era of the new barbarians?

The thing is, the bloody jihad convoy flotilla was launched in Turkey by the IHH. The State department will be designating the IHH a terrorist organization. What is Cameron doing? And who is he serving?

David Cameron today described Gaza as a 'prison camp' and appealed to the Israeli Government to allow the free flow of humanitarian goods and people in and out of the Palestinian territory.

An open air prison camp? More of the Islamic anti-semitic narrative. Britain is an open air prison!

There's an obesity problem in Gaza, for pete's sake. Gaza is free. Perhaps if they removed their teeth from Israel's neck and set about to live, work, create, invent, etc., and left the Jews alone, all would be well.

'The situation in Gaza has to change. Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.

'The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable. And I have told PM Netanyahu we will expect the Israeli inquiry to be swift, transparent and rigorous.'

The Prime Minister said he hoped that direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians would take place within the coming weeks and urged Turkey to press the parties to come together by 'making the case for peace'.

He said: 'Turkey's relationships in the region, both with Israel and with the Arab world, are of incalculable value."

UPDATE: Cameron is lecturing the Jewish people but has not trouble with this: The forgotten Holocaust: The Armenian massacre that inspired Hitler

Atlas Shrugs