Death Comes to Syria and Egypt

Someone attacked a suburb of Damascus, Syria this week with all the quiet fury of a Biblical plague.  No marks of sacrificial blood could save the innocent or chosen.  This work of man killed all indiscriminately.

Nerve gas wafted through the streets and homes.  By the time it dissipated, it killed 1,300 just as effectively as the Japanese at Nanking or the Romans at Carthage in the Third Punic War.

The Daily Mail referred to the incident as "the town that never woke up."

The Syrian belligerents can be divided into three categories.  First is the Syrian government itself, no stranger to atrocities.  Rebelling against it is one group with an equal potential for evil, the Islamicists.  Kurdish forces in the northeast have seized important points.  Kurds have a quasi-sovereign state in northern Iraq, but also live in Syria, Turkey, and Iran.  Possibly the weakest faction is the Syrian nationalist rebels, tied by outrageous fortune to the Islamicists.

Government forces showed signs of desperation earlier this week when they attacked the Israeli held Golan Heights.  Provoking a war with Israel would throw the region into chaos.  Israel, so far, has remained somewhat restrained.

A group allied with the Syrian government took down the Washington Post's website last week.

The Washington Free Beacon reported a day before the attack that a joint Russian-American plan to create a transitional government has not taken the first necessary steps.

Meanwhile in Egypt, as was reported yesterday by Kirby Wilbur on the Sean Hannity Show, Muslim Brotherhood thugs, ousted by the military, have taken their rage out on the Coptic Christian community.

American influence since World War II has not brought complete peace, but has kept the lid on conflicts that could have erupted without its presence.  US troops have occasionally played a role, as in Lebanon under Eisenhower and Reagan. This also, of course, includes the Iraq wars. But usually US aims are realized through  the dispensation of aid and realpolitik style maneuvering.

Some of these conflicts, such as the rise of the Islamofascist thug group, Muslim Brotherhood, have steadily percolated for years.  The Brotherhood aligned with the Nazis before and during World War II to try and destabilize British authority in the Middle East.  Ever since, they have worked to undermine secular rule in Egypt to establish an Iran or Taliban style state there.

The full realization of their plans would put a hostile power in control of the vital Suez Canal who also would attack Israel.

Part of the problem lies at the feet of Barack Obama.  Nearly every president since Harry Truman has based American Middle East policy on certain foundations.  First was support of Israel.  Second, America must protect, or support the protection of, strategic interests.  These include safe ocean passage through the Suez, Straits of Hormuz, etc., oil reserves, and important points.

The United States also worked to prevent the rise of malefactors in the Middle East, but also lived with anti-democratic forces willing to go along with the game plan.  For example, Qaddafi was an enemy when he sponsored terrorism.  When he renounced weapons of mass destruction, he became at least tolerable and a possible example of a "reformed" dictator.  Not the best case scenario, but an improvement.

Supporting "democracy" in the Middle East is problematic.  Islamofascists, like the German Nazis and Communists before, advocate "democracy" so that they can come to power and annihilate it.  The best case scenario for Germany in the mid 1930s would have been a military coup and purge of Hitler's followers and Communists, followed by a restoration of the Kaiser.  Those rebelling against authoritarianism today often only plan to establish bloody totalitarianism tomorrow.

Previous presidents understood this.  Obama does not.

American policy in the region has no chance of restoration under Obama.  His aimless diplomacy, coupled with two poorly performing secretaries of state, inspire no respect.  Middle Easterners did not always like Obama's predecessor, but they respected his strength and ability to act.  Obama has effectively destroyed that perception and replaced it with weakness.

Drifting away from Israel has also made war more likely, not less.

Even though energy self-sufficiency will de-emphasize the Middle East's importance somewhat, it still breeds hate and terror.  America must have a policy that starts with a perception of strength based on the reality of action.  Doing anything else increases the chance of war and/or terror attacks.

Congressmen Targeting Paper Mills

Last night I attended the wind energy meeting at, appropriately enough, the Wind Lea Conference Center. US Windforce representatives broke down for us the pre construction steps that needed to be taken before the turbines can go up, along with reviewing what they had done in the last six months to get this far. I came away thinking that if I had money to invest to actually build a new industrial concern, I would probably do it in China. Why would anyone want to jump through all of these regulatory hoops to build in the United States? The process is so difficult, expensive, and time consuming that it is not worthwhile to manufacture here. Since we have chosen to make new manufacturing as difficult as possible by electing leaders that pass these laws, if we want good jobs, we must keep what we have.

Around here, that means The Mill. In an economic downturn, our paper mill's employees are always worried about layoffs or even a shut down. They have to worry because it is their family's livelihood. Even more importantly is the ripple effect from employees. They can afford to surface their driveways, put in pools, and do other things that employ local small businesses. I know of one small business whose entire customer base last summer was mill employees.

That is why the new efforts to slip cap and trade back into relevance are so menacing. Joe Lieberman (I) CT, Lindsay Graham (allegedly R) SC and John Kerry (D) MA are trying to refashion the cap and trade bill to go after specific industries. Going after everything at once was too controversial. Going after industries piecemeal might not get as much negative attention.

They want to go after electric utilities first. That, of course, means coal fired plants. We are familiar with the War on Coal. However, among the next list of targets are paper mills. In both cases they want to introduce costly regulations that will have the effect of driving away jobs and perhaps entire establishments.

Clearly if this new assault on mining and manufacturing is allowed to pass, Mineral, Garrett, and Allegheny Counties will be economically devastated. Each relies so heavily on the mill at Luke for jobs.

Lindsay Graham has broken from an otherwise solid GOP stance against this further assault on manufacturing. Otherwise, Republicans by and large support the businesses and workers in mills, mines, and other traditional blue collar fields.

Mill workers and miners in this area need to get their unions active on this issue. Tell them to blast Congress with demands that they stop attacking the American worker in the name of a global warming theory based on the fraud of lying scientists. In the past, unions protected labor against company policies that sometimes neglected workers' interests. Now it is clear that labor unions and business have the common interest of keeping jobs here. They need to work together to fight legislation that kills jobs.

If the mill goes away, what will replace it? Who will employ these people? Where will they go? What will they do? John Kerry, Lindsay Graham, and Joe Liebermann should come to Luke and answer those questions personally.

Good Times When Obama Improvises

Once again the president demonstrates a complete lack of awareness of the very issues he pushes. The following came from a recent appearance by The Won.

A student raised a question about the government's provision of health services and its impact on private services. Obama answered:

"How can a private company compete against the government? My answer is that if the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining, meaning that taxpayers aren't subsidizing it, but it has to run on charging premiums and providing good services, and a good network of doctors, just like private insurers do, then I think private insurers should be able to compete.

"They do it all the time. If you think about it, UPS and Fed-Ex are doing just fine. It's the Post Office that's always having problems.... there is nothing inevitable about this somehow destroying the private marketplace. As long as it is not set up where the government is being subsidized by the taxpayers so that even if they are providing a good deal, we keep having to pony up more and more money."

You know, that sounds like a great argument AGAINST government intervention in health care. Gee America, your health care can be run just with as much cost efficiency as the Postal Service.

Of course Fed Ex is not exactly running in a purely capitalist mode either, having somehow gotten John Kerry to successfully introduce legislation many years ago to tweak the law and give them an advantage over UPS. Meanwhile the Postal Service, unable to handle its own task efficiently, repeatedly contracts out a lot of work to UPS.

Obama really needs to stick to his script. When he gets too far away from it, too much truth comes out. Then he just sounds like Joe Biden.