Quote of the Day: Peacefullest Peace Prize Winner Ever

Do you feel this way too?

"It's hard to keep track of the Nobel Peace Laureate's manifold wars, kinetic actions, and drone assassinations."

Two Journalists on the Middle East and Foreign Policy

The always-interesting Michael Totten has a new article on the persistence of the Islamist threat, while Canadian journalist Terry Glavin in his piece "On the Front Line of a Global Struggle" surveys a number of good books.  He also notes this portion of an interview chronicled in one of those books:

“S.D.”, in Iran, writes directly to those of us who live in the West: “While you are fighting for the rights of pandas over there, people are still being stoned to death here in my country.”

That's more perspective than you'll get in many a classroom or thinktank these days.  RELATED: Lara Logan on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Walter Russell Mead on the "War That Nobody Wants"

Take a look.  It begins with a huge salvo of sarcasm:

As everybody knows, there is no such thing as a global war on terror anymore. Instead we live in a harmonious world of interfaith comity with only the occasional criminal act that is quickly and competently handled by law enforcement officials. As a result we can cut our defense budgets and get on with the real business of life, which is to say watching TV, going to the mall and voting to re-elect the strategic geniuses whose wise decisions and firm but thoughtful leadership gave us this tranquil world order.

That Implies That There Was A Coherent Policy to Begin With

Charles Krauthammer fulminates that we're seeing the collapse of Obama's policy on the Muslim world.  OK, but as this post title says, that implies that there was a coherent policy to begin with ... Because as far as I'm concerned, apologizing in Egypt and "leading from behind" on the Arab Spring and whimsically/cluelessly lobbing Operation Rhododaktylos Tomahawk Missiles in Libya don't count as a coherent foreign policy with any strategic substance whatsoever.  Anyway ... Here's Krauthammer, ladies and gentlemen.  Well, there's no doubt that foreign policy - or what passes for it in this administration - is in complete disarray as the State Department is in meltdown too.  Now is it just me or do you also see a horrible symmetry in the fact that Cairo is where Obama first went with his (let's face it, ridiculous) "apology tour" and Cairo is precisely where everything started blowing up in our faces in North Africa?

Oh, and from the archives: almost a year ago to the day I moaned about how our ghastly "foreign policy" was making a dangerous world even more dangerous.  I had no idea, though, that it would end up with Embassy-Storming Week.  It's the administration's utterly mushy "foreign policy" taken to its extreme logical conclusion.  I say, Glenn Reynolds 2016, for he declares that he would adhere to the Napier Response and arm his embassies with Marines wielding not only live ammo but flamethrowers!

Apparently It's "Embassy-Storming Week" In the Annals of "Smart Diplomacy"

Egypt. Libya. Now Yemen.   The news story mentions Tunisia too.  This is insane. And deeply troubling.

UPDATE: It's spreading beyond US embassies to the German and British embassies in Sudan. This means the gentle reader Eric's comment below was right on the money, since he made it before the attacks in Sudan.

Magi Market Issues: Frankincense Shortage

Oh, my!  

Foreign Affairs Explained With Cows

Brilliant.  See the follow-up too.

Thoughts on Repression in the Middle East

Read this and this (via this).  The second link to a Dubai-based Arab op-ed basically says, the Zionist entity is bad, but our own Arab dictators are even worse!  It's a start.  Here's a bit of it:

Unlike in some Arab countries, Arabs living inside Israel can organise sit-ins very comfortably. And when the Israeli police intervenes, they never beat demonstrators to death. And if we compare how Israel treats Shaikh Raed Salah with the way some Arab dictators treat their opponents, we will be horribly surprised, as the Israelis are very much less brutal ... 

Israel can always claim it is facing an enemy, whereas Arab dictators are facing their own people.

Nerd Analysis: Prof. Bernard Lewis on the Arab Uprisings

"A mass expression of outrage against injustice."  Read the whole thing.  Professor Lewis had earlier thoughts on Egypt here.

Yemen: Another Sclerotic Regime Down

It's over for President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power for 30 years.  Add this to Tunisia and Egypt, and take a look at what's going on in Jordan.  Hmmmm.  We do live in -- what's that phrase?  ah yes -- interesting times.