Tag Archive 'Turkey'

Frank Miller’s Geostrategic Theory

Lee on Dec 22 2008 | Filed under: Culture, Foreign affairs, Military Matters

Frank Lovece sat down with Frank Miller for Newsday to discuss his upcoming film The Spirit. Toward the end of it Lovece asked Miller about remarks he’d made in 2007 in support of the Iraq War, and offered him an opportunity to clarify/retract. Miller was unapologetic:

Lovece: Speaking of which: You engendered some controversy on a radio show, comparing our invading Iraq with our response to Pearl Harbor. Since Iraq didn’t attack us, did you really mean to say that?

Miller: When the U.S. was attacked at Pearl Harbor, we didn’t just declare war on Japan, we declared war on Germany. It was an international fascist effort. And so when I said that the attack on Iraq made sense, it was the same way we had to attack not just Afghanistan. Instead we had to attack the center of Islamofascism.
(Newsday)

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Animal Sacrifice and Sacrificial Punditry

Lee on Nov 07 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008

Delighted with the American election result for whatever reason, Kurdish villagers in Cavustepe, Turkey to honor Barack Obama. They also smeared the blood of the offering on Obama campaign posters, purportedly for good luck. Now there’s a weekend project for the press corps.

On a similar note, here’s another reminder that conservatives desperately need a new commentariat in addition to new leadership in the congress. Krauthammer sees Obama as the next Reagan striding across the globe, and Mary Katharine Ham reminds us of David Brooks in October, confessing to being warm quivering goo in the hands of the giant. One should always demand more than surrogacy from the opposition. One might even insist on opposition.

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NATO Protection only for Perfection?

Lee on Aug 15 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Lee's Page

Alex Harrowell reminds us that NATO wasn’t always so timorous about conflict risk exposure:

[I]f we assume that Georgia, and specifically Mikhail Saakashvili’s version of it, wasn’t sufficiently responsible (adult, civilised, possibly even white?) to play, how do we explain that Germany got to join in 1955, when a whole great chunk of it was in the other side’s hands? Or Turkey and Greece, who despite being profoundly NATO-integrated regularly use their NATO-standard air defence infrastructure to play cowboys and Indians over the Aegean? One of the reasons for extending membership of NATO, and the EU, has been to reach out first; that it’s better to offer membership, and hope the requirements shape some country’s thinking, than to wait forever for perfection. If this was good enough for Germany, surely it can be good enough for Georgia.
(Fistful of Euros)

A fine and troubling point. If the division of Germany between 1945 and 1955 wasn’t an unresolved ideological version of a “frozen conflict” at perpetual flashpoint risk, then do tell me what it was.

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McCain’s Turks vs. Obama’s Armenians?

Lee on Aug 09 2008 | Filed under: Election 2008, Foreign affairs, Lee's Page


Tsitsernakaberd (photo: Adam Lederer)

Just when bewilderment at the spectacle of Steve Cohen going absolutely berserk on an Armenian film crew had started to subside (they were trailing him over his opposition to recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide), I read that an Armenian socnet war is on the make.

Due to the perception that Obama is stronger on the issue of recognition (even though he endorsed Cohen), ethnic Armenians have apparently become strong supporters of Obama over the genocide issue, while Turks are lining up behind John McCain in default opposition.

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