PoliticsUSA: Debt Ceiling Legislation: The impasse according to Charles Krauthammer

Washington Post (July30,1940)

Krauthammer:  "Obama faces two massive problems — jobs and debt. They’re both the result of his spectacularly failed Keynesian gamble: massive spending that left us a stagnant economy with high and chronic unemployment — and a staggering debt burden. Obama is desperate to share ownership of this failure. Economic dislocation from a debt-ceiling crisis nicely serves that purpose — if the Republicans play along. The perfect out: Those crazy Tea Partyers ruined the recovery!

"Why would any conservative collaborate with that ploy? November 2012 constitutes the new conservatism’s one chance to restructure government and change the ideological course of the country. Why risk forfeiting that outcome by offering to share ownership of Obama’s wreckage?"

— I recommend that you read the entire WaPo article by Krauthammer.  And while you're at it, you mite want to read also Todd Zywicki's item in Volokh Conspiracy (July30,2k11), "Charles Krauthammer on the Debt Ceiling Debate," a short comment and a different quote from The Hammer (he always hits the nail on its head!).


— Politicarp

Politics: Israel / Gaza: Columnist analyzes the naval blockade and war going on in the Med, with parallels to to past USA blockades

The brilliant syndicated columnist of Washington Post (WaPo) writes analytically and succinctly of the precedents of the blockade maintained by Israel against the Hamas terrorist regime in Gaza, the tiny enclave of a million souls that snuggles into the shore line of the East Mediterranean sea between Israel's 6 million and Egypt's 80.5 million. I quote a brief snippet from WaPo's edition today (Jun3,2k3):

Oh, but weren't the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel's offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza -- as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.


Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel's inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas.

Krauthammer makes an informative geostrategic analysis of the h+ly relevant concepts pertinent to the specifics of Israel's defense against Hama terrorism from Gaza. The concepts to which he attends are Forward defense and Active defense, and there's a third, Passive defense which must be added given the present situation in the "international community."

Rookmaker Club files

Reformational political philosophy has rarely taken up the questions of military and strategic concerns. The Rookmaker Club files edited by Politicarp allow the community of the Protestant philosophy initiated by Dooyeweerd, Vollenhoven, Mekkes, Rookmaker, and Stafleu (all of whom underwent the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, two of whom were  Dutch military -- Mekkes and Rookmaker -- they ending up in prison camps for the War's duration), allows the present-day Protestant Christian philosophical community in the USA to address one another as Americans not in denial about terrorism, the present wars, and future mass conflict.

Under the first rubric, he wr+ts:

Land for peace. Remember? Well, during the past decade, Israel gave the land -- evacuating South Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. What did it get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack.

Since the Active Defense strategy did not work (2000, 2005, Krauthammer notes that Israel "then had to switch to active defense -- military action to disrupt, dismantle and defeat (to borrow President Obama's description of our campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda) the newly armed terrorist mini-states established in southern Lebanon and Gaza after Israel withdrew" (2006, 2008-09).

The punch of the article is heady, and it comes under the heading Passive Defense. I urge refWr+t readers to clickup the article to read it in its entirety.
-- Politicarp