Saturday, April 11, 2009
UN Powers Agree to 'Condemn' N. Korean Missile
Even though the U.N. "condemnation" is weaker than a new resolution and unlikely to matter, North Korea will probably raise tensions with a new provocation--perhaps even another nuclear weapon test.Analysis: Why the Somali Pirates Have Already Won
Regardless of how the hostage crisis ends, Somalia's Islamist-linked, Muslim pirates have already won.
Their land bases will not be attacked; their ports will not be blockaded.
Al Qaeda-associated Al Shabab terrorist training camps will not be hit.
In return for protection from Al Shabab, the pirates will continue to share their ransom money and loot with the Islamist terrorists.
The United States will investigate and debate, maybe hold Congressional hearings, as proposed by U.S. Senator John Kerry, analyze the root causes of piracy, promise to bring this or that individual to justice, and so on and so forth.
In other words, the U.S. under President Barack Obama will take no meaningful action against those who capture Americans and hold them hostage. Real reprisals that could deter future outrages are out of the question. 
In fairness to Obama, he is following a long, bipartisan, American tradition of appeasing Arab radicals and radical Islam.
For more than three decades, the U.S. State Department covered up the PLO's role in assassinating U.S. diplomats. State played along with the convenient fiction that Black September and other groups were rogues beyond the control of PLO chief Yasser Arafat.
Bombings and hijackings of American airlines by Palestinian terrorists went unpunished.
Kidnapping, torture and murder of Americans went unpunished.
Worse, the terrorists were rewarded; the U.S. recognized and engaged them
Perfidy
A blog is insufficient; it would take a book to document and describe the perfidy. To cite a few striking examples, Jimmy Carter betrayed Iran's modernizing monarch, the Shah, in a craven attempt to curry favor with the Shah's nemesis, the viciously anti-American, anti-Israel Ayatollah Khomeini. After allowing Americans to be taken hostage in Tehran, Carter bungled a rescue operation in 1980.
Three years later, Ronald Reagan cut and ran from Lebanon rather than avenge the death of 241 marines at their barracks in Beirut. Unlike his predecessor, Carter, Reagan talked tough; but he did nothing.
In 1994, Bill Clinton pulled troops out of Somalia after an angry mob dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of the capital, Mogadishu, and 18 American soldiers were killed in a disastrous, 17-hour firefight that led to the book and movie Blackhawk Down.
Clinton essentially spit on their graves. Obama is seizing every opportunity to follow his example.Pentagon Weighing Options Against Pirates; Insiders Say President Opposes Use of Force
The Pentagon faced difficult choices Saturday in the standoff with Somali pirates holding a US merchant captain captive, even as pirates hijacked another vessel.
Pirates on Saturday captured a US-owned and Italian-flagged tugboat in the Gulf of Aden, Andrew Mwangura of Kenya's East African Seafarers Assistance Programme told AFP.
In Washington, the Pentagon said it was "looking into" the media reports, but had no further comment.
A US military spokesman also declined to comment on how the US navy would react if the pirates holding Captain Richard Phillips in a lifeboat manage to get him to another vessel, as they have threatened.
Phillips was captain of the freighter Maersk Alabama, which pirates stormed earlier this week. The freighter's US sailors managed to regain control of the ship, but the pirates fled taking Phillips hostage.
Washington insiders tell China Confidential U.S. President Barack Obama is opposed to using force to end the humiliating standoff.
Obama is reportedly afraid that military action will result in the death of the American hostage.
Sources say the President also fears images that will "inflame the Muslim world."
A Washington-based analyst predicts: "Obama will never authorize attacks on the pirates' land bases."
Somalia is a failed state largely ontrolled by Islamist warlords, including groups and individuals associated with Al Qaeda, which has vowed to disrupt Western shipping.
UPDATE: The FBI's involvement and reported plan to build a criminal case against the pirates reflects the Obama administration's intention to downgrade the crisis by demilitarizing it. Branding the ship a "crime scene" is of a piece with demilitarizing the war against radical Islam. Involving the FBI in a high-profile way is also intended to serve as a signal to the CIA, which is tasked with defending the U.S. against foreign threats, that it, too, will be downgraded in an attempt to appease and accommodate Islamists.
Sunday, 12 April 2009
As China Confidential predicted, the United States has agreed to a watered down United Nations Security Council response to North Korea's illegal ICBM test. Click here for the story.
AFP reports:
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