Defection of Gaddafi's Foreign Minister Presages Collapse of Regime

The following short piece that was written on April 1, 2011, predicted the present collapse of the Gaddafi regime.

NATO in Libya Fraught with Peril April 01, 2011

By Sean Kay The Washington Note

A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

Sean Kay’s NATO in Libya Fraught with Peril, is politically inept and has already been overcome by events. As we had predicted, the end result of a decisive military intervention by Western powers would be to bring the collapse of the Gaddafi regime. Now the degringolade of the regime is imminent. This is clearly foreshadowed by the defection of foreign minister Moussa Koussa, a close collaborator of Gaddafi and a former director of Libyan Intelligence to boot, that sets the example for other high officials of the regime to follow.

Who would be a better qualified person than a former director of Intelligence to read correctly the vibes and disposition of the Libyan people toward the regime, and more importantly, the latter’s inability to suppress the bouleversement against it, and hence induce Mr. Koussa, for these reasons, to abandon the doomed sinking ship of Gaddafi?

Attack on 9/11 Existential Threat to Western Civilization

By Con George Kotzabasis

September 11 has placed open societies and their democratic freedoms at the crossroads of victory or subjugation. No intellectualist quibbling or obfuscation can cover and evade this historic fact. Fanatic Muslim terrorists pose a threat to civilized societies of biblical proportions, especially if they acquire weapons of mass destruction through rogue states.

Yet the liberal intelligentsia in its necrophilous stance attempts to shift the blame from the terrorist perpetrators to their victims. In their mind's eyes, September 11 was the comeuppance of America for the ills the latter had "rained" upon the oppressed of the world by spreading its rapacious eagle's wings over the globe in its pursuit of dominance and empire. Thus the terrorist’s threat is subordinated and replaced by the liberal invention of its own "evil empire". Turning logic on its head, fanatic terrorism becomes less dangerous and is transformed into a "lesser evil". In an ironic twist, the threat posed by terrorists against the West, is turned into the threat of the "Lone Avenger". But that the latter might ride through the canyons of America, in his pursuit of punishing evil, not with six caliber pistols in his holsters but with nuclear weapons, is of no concern to them. Hence, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are all liberals. Foreordaining the destruction of Western societies by a fanatic horde of religious barbarians.

People, who have studied history in the sublime pages of Thucydides, Gibbon, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Meinecke, and Huntington, can only rally one answer to this great threat. Fight it to the death with no quarter given to it. History has transparently shown, that the greatest atrocities against mankind were committed by religious fundamentalists, and by all omniscient purist ideologues. Examples are the religious wars of 17th Century Europe, which decimated almost two thirds of its population, and the Nazi and Communist ideologies that massacred millions in the 20th Century in their pursuit to breathe life, like God, to their misplaced and displaced utopias. Muslim fundamentalist inspired terror, is also set in among these dangerous misplaced utopias. But it is even more dangerous, in that its proponents and its fanatically blind activists unshakably believe are guided by the invisible hand of Allah and that they are His instruments.

This is the reason why all diplomatic overtures in this war against terrorism and its state sponsors, are doomed to failure. It is just impossible to negotiate any set of compromises of give and take, which is the substance of diplomacy, with these Muslim fundamentalists. It would just be as futile an attempt, as it would be to argue against God.

My first paper, 'Unveiling the War against Terror' presages precisely the above. The Bush Administration would not enter into this course of diplomatic failure and it would not be lured by the United Nations' siren songs. While it was wise of the Administration to forge a notable coalition against terrorism, the latter would not be indispensable in its fight against terror. The same paper predicts the unconventionality of the war against terror, i.e., the primary role Special Forces would play in this war - and the splendid performance of the Australian SAS Forces in Afghanistan and especially in Iraq, exemplified this role - as well as the defeat of the Taliban and al Qaeda, in contrast to the conventional wisdom of most media commentators, who asserted that the American forces would not win and would be bogged down in Afghanistan, just like the Soviet forces. It was also prescient in its finding that strategically it would be a pre-emptive war, hence, anticipating the Pentagon's new strategy against terror and against rogue states. (This paper was sent to the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in November 2001 ).

The second paper titled 'U.S. Unilateralism only Alternative to Multilateral Weakness', responds to The Open Letter of the former Governor General Bill Hayden, and of three former prime ministers, Fraiser, Whitlam, and Hawke, and condemns their un-historic and populist stand against America's impending war in Iraq. Their 'un-heroic cunctation', to quote John Maynard Keynes, is another monument of folly build with the debris of Munich. To await for the more and more evanescent imprimatur for the war in Iraq by the UN Security Council, would have been the ultimate inanity. The paper also predicts, that the 'missing star in this constellation of darkness' (the signers of The Open Letter), Paul Keating, would also take an anti-American stand, which soon afterwards he did, but as is his wont as primo uomo, he would give his performance as a "soloist".

The third paper titled, 'How to Legitimize the Interim Government in Iraq’ ... is a strategic proposal and was sent for this purpose to both President Bush and vice-President Cheney in late August 2003. As is shown by subsequent events, the Americans put on a fast track the formation of both the Interim Government in Iraq, as well as the arming of the Iraqis, two of the suggestions that I had made in this paper. I am confident, that my third suggestion, which is the axis of my proposal in this paper, the master plan, i.e., the Iraqi people should be given the equity of the nation's oil wealth, will also be adopted. And the Interim Government of Iraq at its formation in July 2004, will make this historic pronouncement to its people, and by doing so will confer 'unassailable legitimacy' to itself.

All the other papers emphasize that the war against global terror is a two front war, that is, one also has to fight the rogue states if one is serious in defeating this terrorist menace. As these rogue states have the potential of becoming the suppliers of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. Moreover, one of them predicts that the defeat of one rogue state, in this case Iraq, will have domino effects upon all other rogue states. And the dominoes have already started falling, as the recent capitulation of Libya has shown.

'The war against global terror and its state sponsors is an existential war, a war of survival, and cannot be fought on humane grounds'. All wars brutalize their combatants and under their immense pressures 'can break the strongest of wills, the best of disciplines'. The war against global terror and its state sponsors magnifies this brutality. Its combatants are fighting, and are threatened by a shadowy enemy and cannot distinguish easily friend from foe. In Iraq, American soldiers are giving candy to Iraqi children, but as soon as they turn their backs to them, the latter are throwing stones at the soldiers in place of thanks. It is due to the heavy pressures of terrorist warfare that the American soldiers' discipline is buckling and, while regrettable and even deplorable, one can see and understand the torture of prisoners in Iraq and in Afghanistan as one result of this. It should also not be forgotten that most of the prisoners were and are terrorists who could provide vital information to their American interrogators about their networks that could save thousands of lives, as well as lead to the defeat of terrorists in the field of battle. 'In such a setting, the torture of prisoners is the tragic price of such a war that statesmanship must pay'.

The papers are not written in the suave language of diplomats nor in the smoothing words of the gentile classes. In times of war, a writer has to mobilize his words, as a general has to mobilize his troops for battle, forcefully. They are written for the purpose of rallying people behind their governments, as a call to arms. They are also written to provoke people to search for the truth and debunk all those who claim to possess it. And last but not least, to salvage the truth of the war from the politically designated distortions and fabrications of its liberal and leftist critics, that has been so characteristic of much Western thinking and so ubiquitous throughout most of the media since 9/11.


May 9, 2004 MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA

P.S. The above text is the Introduction of my book “Unveiling The War Against Terror: Fight Right War or Lose The Right To Exist”, that was published in May 2004, and which is available at Readings Bookshops at Hawthorn and Port Melbourne, in Melbourne.

High Court's Decision:Triumph of Legal Activism at the Cost of Australia

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shovelling smoke. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

The High Court’s decision that the Gillard Government’s deportation of asylum seekers to Malaysia is unlawful is a devastating blow to Labour’s immigration policy and a lethal hit on Australian border protection. It’s ostensibly clear that a majority of the honourable justices of the court are not immune to the deadly pestilential virus of legal activism whose source has been a number of admirable but impractical human rights enactments by the United Nations  which can only be implemented by the abrogation of the national sovereignty of nations. But in the context of judicial activism the immigration policy of Labour would stand its trial before judges who already had the sentence of death in their pockets. The majority of the justices argued that Malaysia not being a signatory of the UN Convention to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol is not legally obliged to protect refugees and therefore is not a suitable country to deport refugees. Moreover, according to refugee advocate Julian Burnside, QC, the justices reminded the government that “Australia is signatory to a number of human rights conventions” and is legally bound to abide by them. However, “Commonwealth Solicitor–General Stephen Gageler argued that the government could lawfully declare Malaysia a safe third country even though it had no domestic nor international legal obligations to protect asylum seekers.” But while lawyers may ‘shovel smoke’ at each other on this issue, the repercussions of the High Court’s decision on immigration policy and border protection are of a serious nature and may cause great harm to Australia.

Zabiullah Ahmadi, an Afghan who lives in Kuala Lumpur, predicts than “within weeks there will be lots of boats...many people have been waiting to see this decision.” Hence, the High Court’s decision will encourage asylum seekers to risk their lives in unseaworthy boats with the hope of reaching the shores of Australia which to many of them, in the context of this decision, has become the refugees nirvana. Another refugee observer, Abdul Rahma, a leader of the Rohingga Community in Malaysia, said, the “Australia-Malaysia deal has been a useful bulwark to stop the tide of asylum seekers risking their lives travelling to Australia. Now they would return to the boats.” With the great probability therefore of an increase in boat smuggling and the attached physical and psychological risks that asylum seekers will have to take, the judges of the High Court have unwittingly, and must I add, foolishly, become accessories before the fact of this great danger to the lives of refugees on board of unseaworthy vessels. Furthermore, the honourable justices by ‘signing on’ the UN Convention on refugees, they have written off the long term interests of Australia in regard to its immigration policy that is of such paramount importance to its future balanced demographic mix. A mix that will not threaten its Western based values and the harmony of its democratic society  as it has on many European countries due to an unwise and completely flawed immigration policy that so acrimoniously and precariously has divided the indigenous population and immigrants, as exemplified by the massacre in Norway and the riots in the cities of Britain.

But one must be reminded that the decision of the High Court is a direct outcome of the foolish dismantling by the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of the successful “Pacific Solution” of Howard’s government that in fact had stopped the refugee boats coming to the shores of Australia. And the serially incompetent and politically effete Julia Gillard who succeeded him to the Lodge had to pick up this can of worms, i.e., this confused new Labour policy that was kicked by Rudd to his successor with his ousting from the Lodge.

In the context of the decision of the High Court the Gillard government has no alternative other than to change by legislation the immigration laws. And it is good to see that in this task to protect the borders of Australia, the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has stated that the Liberal/National Coalition would support such legislation if the Government would consider Nauru as an offshore refugee centre. It is imperative that this offshore solution must not be replaced by the cretinous stupid proposal of the Greens and their sundry ‘paramours’ of human rights lawyers and refugee advocates that asylum seekers should be held in onshore centres such as on Christmas Island. Such a short sighted harebrained proposal would lead to a stampede of smuggler’s boats hitting the shores of Australia and would be an incentive for ruffians of all kinds to continue entering in greater numbers such a lucrative business.

Finally, the High Court’s decision is a portentous illustration of what is in store for nations who injudiciously and facilely sign international conventions without considering the serious and injurious repercussions such covenants could have on national sovereignty. No wise political leadership would be ‘outsourcing’ the sovereignty of one’s nation.                 

How to Mobilize the Tribal Chiefs of Afghanistan against the Taliban

By Con George-Kotzabasis

There is a great possibility of replicating the Surge in Afghanistan with the following economic-political-military strategy: To shift the estuary of the stream of revenue from narcotics from the Taliban’s and narco-lords’ mouths to the government mouth with the aim to feed the hungry mouths of the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan. That is, to nationalize the poppy industry and make the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan the direct equity holders of the income that accrues from the production of opium. Such a policy will create a powerful self-interest and lead to a Tribal Chief’s awakening that will be more widespread and potent than the Iraqi one, since it will mobilize the whole country, through its tribal chiefs, against the Taliban and the narco-lords.

Thus U.S. forces will not have to go to a wild goose chase of serendipity to get “their lucky break.”

This idea was floated by me in a paper of mine on October 2008.

Euthanasia of the Presidency under Obama

By Con George-Kotzabasis

President Obama is placing the vibrant presidency of the most powerful nation in the world in the hands of the practitioners of euthanasia as if America were in the agony of its death throes. Cynical about America’s global political and military power; cynical about its ability to win the war against its deadly and irreconcilable enemy; cynical about its peoples’ steadfastness and determination to wage war against the fanatical hordes of Islam that threaten America’s heartland; cynical of its European allies’ resolution--under indomitable and sagacious US leadership--to fight the same war; and cynical of the capacity of the best professionally trained armed forces in the world, i.e., the American, to defeat an impromptu organized group of terrorists, who bereft of cool strategic nous in comparison to its ‘infidel’ opponents, are impulsively fighting the Great Satan and all the other little Satans of  the West  with the fanatical cry of Allahu Akbar,  President Obama has chosen, due to this inveterate cynicism and to his guileful and odious politics as we shall  see further down, most imprudently strategically and politically and sans amour propre to retreat from the battlefield, with macabre geopolitical consequences for America’s prestige as a superpower, and take cover behind a no longer fortress America.

As we predicted early in 2009, during the long gestation of the president’s ‘new strategy’ for Afghanistan which under the pretence of giving serious consideration to the request of his senior commander in Afghanistan General McChrystal to increase the troops by 40,000, he dithered his decision not however for the purpose of how to win the war but for the purpose of weighing the political costs that would accrue to him if he had accepted the advice of his general. And when finally he made his decision, he increased the troops by 30,000 while handing to his National Security team a memo setting the strict terms that this increase included the July 2011 start date for a US troop withdrawal. Hence, Obama as Commander-in-Chief, whilst his brave soldiers and astute generals were spilling their blood in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan fighting the Taliban with the aim of defeating them, all he was thinking about were the political costs that would bear upon him as a result of his apparent greater involvement in the unpopular war. So Obama’s ‘serious’ and long deliberations before he made his decision had nothing to do with a new strategy, emanating from his status as Commander-in-Chief, to defeat the Taliban but had everything to do with his status as political shyster who was only concerned about his polls.

The increase of troops by 30,000 was strategically meaningless as it had not the aim of defeating the enemy since it merely served Obama’s political rationale of not seeming to be weak on war while at the same time placating the anti-war crowd by announcing the withdrawal of all US forces from Afghanistan. What strategist of any substance would increase his forces in the field of battle only to withdraw them without inflicting upon his enemy a mortal blow? And what kind of leader would place an increased number of his soldiers in danger and continue a war that he thinks is unwinnable when his main purpose was to withdraw them from such war, why would he have increased them in the first place if he was planning to withdraw them if not for his concealed ill-design to dupe the American people, to present himself as both a war president and a peaceful one? In reality of course, Obama is neither of these but a political Shylock who demands his pound of flesh from his troops fighting in Afghanistan in order to play his despicable politics at home so he can placate both those Americans who support the war and those who are against it.

From Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Charles Martel, to Napoleon all strategies had a clear and unique goal, to defeat the foe. Only President Obama, who as the most repulsive of political manipulators is wantonly sacrificing the interests of the nation to his own narrow political interests, is disgracefully and timorously traducing this irreversible principle of war and turning himself into a cartoonist mockery as Commander-in-Chief of a great nation.

Afghanistan during Obama’s political campaign was a “war of necessity” that was neglected by President Bush and a war that must be won. But according to Bob Woodward’s new book titled Obama’s Wars, this is no longer so. Obama is quoted as saying, “This needs to be a plan about how we are going to handed it off and get out of Afghanistan.” And the outcome of the policy review and its long deliberations was the offspring of “political considerations,” according to a State Department official. Obama himself reportedly said to Senator Lindsey Graham, “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party” on the issue of Afghanistan. General Petraeus felt so affronted by White House demands for an exit strategy at all costs that he told his aids, “They are f...king with the wrong guy.” Another senior general said that the announcement of the withdrawal by President Obama, gave “sustenance to the Taliban.” Moreover, the policy review has engendered serious divisions within the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Council, and the Defense Department and between American and Afghan officials. Jim Jones, the National Security adviser, calls the ‘bosom’ advisers of Obama, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel variously as the “mafia” the “campaign set” and the “politburo.” And General Petraeus has dubbed Axelrod as the spin artist in residence, and I would add the spin-master who can win elections and lose wars. 

These revelations of Bob Woodward are toxic to Obama’s presidency and threaten to unleash a spate of resignations of top echelons of the Administration. In short, the presidency at this critical moment of national security and war is in a state of disarray. And no matter how he is going to re-arrange the musical chairs of his sinking presidency after losing the better performers, the future ones that will occupy them will be the worst performers that he could get. No one of sterling qualities, of the best and the brightest, will have an inkling to join an intellectually, politically, morally, and strategically bankrupt administration and be branded everlastingly with such an ignominiously failed presidency. Obama by debasing the political currency of a great nation will become the victim of Gresham’s Law. The bad and base currency of circulating officials that will bid for the positions of the Administration will drive the good and golden currency of officials out of circulation for these posts. Hence Obama’s future administration will be filled by political parvenus, professional opportunists, and Cagliostro like political impostors and all ‘playing their tunes’ under the conductors of spin. Such an outcome will seriously undermine America’s prestige and éclat as a superpower. It will momentously endanger the vital interests of the nation and its security by enticing its mortal enemies to attack it, as they see that the rudder of America in the rough seas of the world is in the hands of an incompetent and weak president. The question is whether Americans will allow this to happen and whether they will have the intelligence and courage to use all means to stop it and put an end to Obama’s Directorate of social democracy and to stop at the eleventh hour the euthanasia of the presidency.

I rest on my oars: Your turn now     

Attack on Iran: two Strategic Strikes One Waiting in the Wings

I'm republishing the following piece for the readers of this new blog.

By Con George-Kotzabasis reply to:

The Lies Of Hiroshima Are The Lies Of Today

By John Pilger

On Line opinion, August 14, 2008

The historical fact is, which Pilger deliberately brushes over so he can make his intellectually disingenuous and moral argument, that the fear at the time was that the Germans might get the bomb first not that “Russia was our enemy,” quoting misleadingly General Groves, who was in charge of the Manhattan Project. Roosevelt had an amicable relationship with Stalin and believed their two countries after the war could reach a modus vivendi and indeed, cooperation. Moreover, the head of the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer, and some of its other scientists, was a financial supporter, if not a clandestine member, like his brother, of the Communist Party of the USA, and hardly would have taken the directorship of the project if the bomb was to be used “to browbeat the Russians,” as Pilger claims. 

The intelligent errors of the CIA and all of its European counterparts in their estimates that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, Pilger cleverly transforms them into lies, appealing to the conventional wisdom of the hoi polloi, so he can do his own disinformation in regards to Iran’s covert planning to acquire nuclear weapons, by dubbing it also as a lie, manufactured by the “discredited CIA-sponsored Iranian opposition, the MEK”, according to him, so he can give credibility to his own lies.

For what strategic reason would the US and its ally Israel attack Iran, whilst the former is involved at the moment in two long wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, other than the great threat that a nuclear Iran would pose to the region and to the strategic interests of the one and to the existence of the other? Whom the US would have “to browbeat” by letting loose from their silos their nuclear missiles against Iran, other than the latter?

In my opinion, if Iran is going to be attacked either by the US or Israel or both the strategic planning of the attack would be made up with two strikes. The first one would be to attack Iran with a devastating “rain” of conventional weapons that would target not only its nuclear plants but also its civilian, military, and religious leadership with the aim of decimating them. If however, its triangular leadership miraculously escapes its destruction and retaliates either against the naval and land forces of the US or Israel or any of the other Gulf States, then such retaliatory action by Iran would call a second strike executed either by Israel or the US with nuclear weapons. And it’s in this dual strike, if it becomes evident to the Iranian leadership of American or Israeli determination and resolve to use their powerful armaments against Iran, that a real possibility exists of a palace revolt among its leadership that would oust the radicals and replace them with moderates who would be prone to accept the international community’s demand that Iran ceases the enrichment of uranium. 

Over to you

America Hijacked by a Lemon

Obama’s West Point Speech Regurgitation of his Failed Foreign Policy

By Con George-Kotzabasis

America hijacked by a Lemon!  This will be the historical caption and history’s verdict on President Obama in his foreign policy misadventures of weakness. Who could have thought that the third rate powers of Brazil and Turkey would have the chutzpah and insolence to rudely supplant and supersede U.S. diplomacy on a most grave issue of our times, i.e., the attempted acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran, by their own diplomacy, if America was not perceived under Obama as being weak and disrespectful? And the West Point speech clearly showed that the President still believes that diplomacy sans ‘rattling the sabres’ remains the pivot of his foreign policy despite the fact that this policy abysmally failed to deliver on his primary goals. That is, enticing the enemies of the U.S. to take the diplomatic road and repossess, by this ‘loving diplomacy’ toward implacable foes, the prestige and respect America had prior to the so called dispossession of these attributes by his Texan predecessor.

President Obama stuck to his geopolitical ignorant denial, due to lack of imagination and political nous, does not realize that a symphony, a ‘concert of peace’ having as players other powers can only succeed and be applauded if it has a Karajan as conductor. It is this role of the indispensable conductor in the realm of geopolitics that America has lost with the ‘sitting’ of Obama in the Oval Office. However, there are dawning auspicious signs that the lemon that Americans elected as president is in the process of being squeezed out. But the danger is that by the end of this process, the United States itself might be squeezed out of its strength as the sole superpower.