Friday, April 29, 2011

Cohen- Price of Delusion. Libya and Qadaffi

Roger Cohen’s column in the Times begins with his take on Qaddafi-


“Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi is a vain man. Like the other Arab dinosaurs he has his dyed hair, his designer shades, his spoiled children and his compound full of sycophants. He doesn’t want, one day, to be dragged from a rat hole like Saddam
Hussein or hauled from a bunker like the Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo.”
Qaddafi is not mad,” he writes, but deluded. And who or what helped along his delusion?

Qaddafi is a child of the United Nations, that austere body in New York City that gives the plenum to people like Qaddafi, Hugo Chavez and Ahmadinejad. It is the U.N. and its various councils that empower people like Qaddafi by giving them the veneer of legitimacy that allows them to murder their own people and to sponsor terrorism.

And of the rebels?


“Right now, three squabbling generals jostle for control. The Brits, holed up in a Benghazi hotel compound with one of the generals, are trying to help with that. The United States is offering nonlethal stuff worth millions of dollars: body armor, canteens, uniforms, wire cages for sandbags that can be used to make walls.”
But you sense from Cohen that he blames the U.S. for the rebel’s lack of progress in ousting Qaddafi.



“This embryonic force is not going to defeat Qaddafi in the foreseeable future. Nor can it, alone, apply enough pressure on him for his entourage to see the writing on the wall and act accordingly. That burden falls to NATO. But NATO hesitated as President Obama and America drew back. It is now trying to correct that lapse by escalating operations to take out supply and communications lines.”
I say that the U.N. created Qaddafi, let it now get rid of him. Small chance of that happening as its fecklessness is on display as it considers adding Syria to the UN’s Human Rights Council.

What will be in Libya will be. And I do not hold out much hope of a democratic future.

The full article is here.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

New violence in Israel troubles a father's sore heart in N.J. | NJ.com

My most recent column appeared in the Star-Ledger on Friday, April 15, 2011, New violence in Israel troubles a father's sore heart in N.J.

Originally intended as a political commentary on the Hamas missile attack at an Israeli school bus and the retraction of the Goldstone Report, the column became a personal recollection of my daughter Alisa's murder in April 1995 and the lessons learned since.

Sadly, innocent civilians are again being put in the crosshairs by Hamas and its allies in Gaza. (Thank you, Susie.) And Israel's reaction will be deemed wrong.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

From ADL - Arab newspapers waste no time; anti-Semitic cartoons all the rage.



The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has collected a series of anti-Semitic cartoons printed in response to the retraction of the Goldstone Report.

The cartoons ran on Al-Jezeera and in other media outlets in the Middle East including this one from Jordan, which you will recall has a peace treaty with Israel.


I guess we shouldn't be surprised at this latest outburst from some of Israel's neighbors, but I would like, just once, to be surprised at the absence of such hatred.


You can see the rest of the cartoons and read the ADL press release here: Arab Newspaper Editorial Cartoons React to Goldstone Retraction


Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Brandeis University students embarrass themselves

The Brandeis University student newspaper the Justice, is just chock full of nonsense. My college didn't have a regularly run student newspaper back in the day, so I can only wonder how much stupidity it would have published. Of course, in the 1960s we were concerned about civil rights, the war in Viet Nam, and nothing much else.

Ah, but the students on the Brandeis campus have much to be concerned about, especially the view espoused by two fringe but very vocal groups covered in this article appearing in the Justice: Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace present three generations of Palestinian refugees - News You have to read this tripe to believe it.

But, give them credit, they got the story printed. What a bunch of idiots.

Well, that's what I have to say. Stephen M. Flatow

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Makes my stomach turn- Sanctions Are Dropped Against Libyan Defector

This is the kind of news that no one should have to read in the New York Times- a man who may be responsible for the terror bombing of PanAm 103 is standing in good stead with the Obama administration.

The Obama administration dropped financial sanctions on Monday against the top Libyan official who fled to Britain last week, saying it hoped the move would encourage other senior aides to abandon Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the country’s embattled leader.


But the decision to unfreeze bank accounts and permit business dealings with the official, Moussa Koussa, underscored the predicament his defection poses for American and British authorities, who said on Tuesday that Scottish police and prosecutors planned to interview Mr. Koussa about the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and other issues “in the next few days.”

So what is going on here? This is not a case where a bank robber gets immunity from prosecution for testifying against his buddies. Koussa is not a bank robber. He works for Qaddafi (the Times' spelling) at the highest level of government. Perhaps he's dangling information about Qaddafi's authorization of the bombing? Maybe, but does Koussa deserve a free ride because of it? What do you think? Read the full report from the New York Times: Sanctions Are Dropped Against Libyan Defector