Top 10 Twitter Losers 2012

Barack Obama – For being the worst President of my lifetime (no, Jimmy Carter was before me)

Kim Kardashian - Baharain’s number one propagandist (sorry Ed Husain!)

Piers Morgan – The special relationship might be under strain but we can still agree on something: no one likes Piers Morgan

Haaretz – For running a piece by 9/11 truther John V. Whitbeck who labelled Zionism a “racial-supremicist, settler-colonial experiment”

PressTV – For claiming Sandy Hook massacre was a Zionist plot

Stop the War UK -  For exhausting the moral bankruptcy quotient of the entire year

George Galloway – The champion of dictator apologism

Julian Assange – For supporting freedom of speech only when it fits his agenda

Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer – ‘The Jewish Lobby’. Speaks for itself.

BDS movement – The psycho clowns behind the Israel boycott

Top 50 Favourite Tweeters of 2012

There are too many fascinating people on Twitter to name them all but here is a list of those whose tweets I have most enjoyed in 2012. The entries appear in no particular order of relevance or importance.

Tweeps from the United States

Jeffrey Goldberg – National Correspondent, The Atlantic. One of the most reasoned, calm and sane voices

Eli Lake – Senior national security reporter for Newsweek/Daily Beast. Follow him, if you want to know the truth about Benghazi

Abe Greenwald – Senior Editor, Commentary

Ben Cohen – Contributor to Commentary, WSJ, Ha’aretz, NY Post, Jewish Ideas Daily, Fox News, JNS and Jerusalem Post

Ari Fleischer – Former White House Press Secretary under President George W. Bush. Probably the funniest guy I follow.

The Bush Center-  Official account of the George W. Bush Presidential Center

Tom Taylor - No one re-tweeted me more often. Thank you!

Condoleezza Rice – Former Secretary of State. Political queen of the universe and parallel universes

John McCain – The man who tirelessly exposes the moral bankruptcy of Obama’s foreign policy

Steven A Cook – Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations

Max Boot – Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations

Josh Rogin – Staff Writer,  The Cable

Jackson Diehl – Foreign Affairs columnist, The Washington Post

Ian Bremmer – President of EurasiaGroup

Shadi Hamid – Director of Research at the Brookings Doha Center & Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution

Brian Stewart – Unabashed neocon

Charles Krauthammer – The man behind the ‘Bush Derangement Syndrome’

Andrew Kaczynski – Reporter for BuzzFeed Politics

Tweeps from the United Kingdom

John Rentoul – Columnist, Independent on Sunday; biographer of Tony Blair. The oracle of Westminster

Nick Cohen – Writer for the Observer, Time, Spectator and Standpoint. He affectionately calls me a ‘crazed neocon babe’

Stephen Pollard – Editor, the Jewish Chronicle

Tony Blair Office – Official account of the Former Prime Minister

Ruth Turner – CEO of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and one of the hardest-working and most trustworthy people you will find in British politics

Mr Partisan – Writer , Commentary. In his own words: ‘I makes Newt Gingrich look like a Marxist’.

Robert Halfon – My favourite MP

Tom Harris – A fine and immensely entertaining Labour MP

Martin Bright – Political Editor of The Jewish Chronicle and Spectator blogger

Blairsupporter - I may  resigned from the Blairite attack squadron but he is still standing

Rob Marchant - Blogger and keeps sanity alive on the left

Glen OGlaza – Political Correspondent Sky News

Tim Marshall – Foreign Affairs Editor Sky News (showing his true colours at alter ego Itwitius)

Citizen Sane – His Twitter name speaks for itself: 100% sanity from the political centre

Charles Crawford – Former British Ambassador

Peter Watt – Former Labour Party General Secretary under Tony Blair

Jacob Campbell – Research fellow at the Institute for Middle Eastern democracy and Ahmadinejad hater numero uno

Ed West – Prematurely Right-wing London journalist and Daily Telegraph blogger

Sarah Pilchick‏- My Jewish princess. Plus, we survived the London School of Economics together

Mark Wallace – Political campaigner

Matthew Taylor- Chief Executive of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce

Gary Kent – Administrator of the All-Party Parliamentary Group the Kurdistan Region in Iraq

Ben McCcabe – It takes a brave man to wear a Rick Santorum sweater vest at the London School of Economics

 HKK G – The crème de la crème of Twitter Kurds

Matthew d’Ancona – Columnist, The Sunday Telegraph

Norman Geras – Professor Emeritus in Politics, University of Manchester

Daniel Finkelstein – Columist, The Times

Hopi Sen – Blogger

Alex Dean – Head of Public Affairs, Weber Shandwick UK

Oliver Kamm – Leader Writer, The Times. No one destroys Noam Chomsky like he does

David Aaronovitch – Columist, The Times

Heath Pritchard - Political refugee from Obamunist Seattle

Assassination has replaced interrogation

The Obama administration is launching a secret, undeclared war from the Situation Room in the basement of the White House.

The President himself has unprecedented authority over the ‘Kill List’, which literally sentences people, without interrogation or trial, to certain death.

The excessive use of drones is nothing short of acts of war, where US soldiers no longer fight in flesh and blood but are replaced by metal birds with a license to kill.

Every fourth day, a drone rises somewhere. Between 2009 and present, 283 missions have been authorised on Pakistani territory. In 2011, up to 27 percent of those eliminated were civilians and of the 148-220 casualties in 2012, at least one-fifth were non-combatants.

The total number of people killed remains unclear but what is known is that the current administration’s utilisation of drones is six times and the death toll four times higher than under the previous presidency. Bush authorised no more than 52 strikes during his eight years in office.

In all fairness, under Obama’s leadership top terrorists, including Osama bin Laden and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki have been taken out.

Those victories clearly strengthened the government in its choice of preferred method of killing. In total, however, the percentage of leading terrorist figures eliminated by drones is below two per cent, as a recent study by Stanford Law School and New York University’s School has shown.

Furthermore, according to the Democrat-leaning New America Foundation, under Bush’s leadership, a quarter of those killed by drones were al-Qaeda insurgents and 40 percent Taliban fighters. Obama, in contrast, has liquidated only eight per cent al-Qaeda members and roughly 50 per cent Taliban insurgents. And while under Bush’s command every third drone killed a militant leader, the number has now fallen below 13 percent.

What is fascinating is that this is happening under the watch of the man celebrated as the candidate of hope and change, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, the political messiah who promised a moral departure from years of warmongering.

The truth is that, while the President officially embraces a faint-hearted policy of ‘leading from behind’, he secretly became an executioner.

Drones have replaced Guantanamo Bay: suspected terrorists are no longer being captured. They are killed. No ifs, no buts. It is a cheaper and more discreet modus operandi.

But is what Charles Krauthammer calls ‘the assassination by remote control’ morally superior to enhanced interrogation? Are Obama’s drone strikes not as pre-emptive in nature as the war in Iraq he so fiercely opposed and denounced as unjust? Are they not causing long-term psychological damage to the residents of Pakistan’s tribal northwest region, who hear drones hover 24 hours a day?

This is not a statement against drones per se. They are a legitimate tool in the war on terror. The problem is that Obama has mainstreamed targeted killing, instead of considering it a last resort.

It is time to put an end to the moral amnesia and hold Obama to the same standards we hold Bush. There is no room for saints.

Biden’s Web of Lies

One cannot expect much from a man who suggested to split Iraq into three autonomous regions but even by Biden’s generally low foreign policy standards, his comments on the Middle East in last week’s VP debate were breathtakingly oversimplified and disingenuous.

Biden started the debate with a desperate attempt to cover-up the debacle surrounding the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi. The Vice President failed to answer at least two crucial questions: a) why did Obama, Clinton and Rice apologise to a mob of extremists? and b) why did the US embassy staff had inadequate security?

Biden told an outright lie when he refused to call the attack what it was – an act of terrorism – and instead defended the administration’s discredited narrative. He carefully avoided mentioning the YouTube video which was, after all, nothing but a cover-up for a pre-planned assault against America on the anniversary of 9/11.

He further denied the allegation that the States Department had refused to tighten security, after repeated requests from personnel on the ground. Two officials, however, testified before Congress that Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Charlene Lamb, was aware of the delicate security situation and failed to take appropriate action.

Ultimately, the negligence cost Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other servicemen their lives and someone in the Obama administration must be held accountable for it.

Biden’s quality of answers did not change appreciably when the moderator turned to Iran. For reasons only known to him, the Vice President started giggling when Martha Raddatz questioned him on the ayatollahs’ intention to acquire nuclear capabilities. He relativised the threat post by the Islamic Republic, despite the regime being the greatest risk to peace and stability in the Middle East and the most active state sponsor of terrorism in the region. His assessment of the status of Iran’s nuclear programme struck me as startlingly and dangerously naïve. There is credible evidence which suggests that Iran continues to stockpile uranium enriched to up to 20% purity, a nonessential procedure, unless one plans to build an atomic bomb. 225 kg of 20 percent is sufficient to make 25 kg of 90 percent enriched uranium.

Continuing the trend, the Vice President’s comments on the humanitarian and strategic crisis in Syria can be described as nothing but utterly shameless. According to Biden, the US government is doing everything in its power to stop the bloodshed and cooperates closely with its Arab allies. But if that were true, why would Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, amongst others, complain that the administration’s Syria policy is counterproductive, even destructive, and impedes their efforts to support the Syrian opposition?

Biden made it sound as if there was nothing else the US could do without sending troops to Syria. This, however, is a false choice. In fact, no one, not even the most hawkish supporters of intervention, like Senator John McCain, consider boots on the ground. What they suggest is arming the rebels, setting up humanitarian corridors along the Turkish-Syrian border, and establishing a NFZ to protect civilians from the wrath of Assad’s air force. NFZs worked well in the past, as for instance in Iraq, in the Balkans, and Libya, without zero Western casualties. So again, Biden resorted to overblown assumptions and scaremongering tactics to justify the Obama administration’s colossal moral failure and total absence of leadership in the Middle East.

And just when you thought things could not get any worse, Biden outlined his deeply cynical and reckless approach on the on-going war in Afghanistan. “We are leaving in 2014 – period”, he said. What message does that send to the Taliban? Not only does it strengthen our enemies in the sense that they know that they can play on time, as we will pull out in 2014 no matter the situation, but it also raises the moral question of whether our Afghanistan policy should really be determined by a fixed timetable or degree of success.

Our fallen shall not have died in vain.

Biden reached a climax of hypocrisy when he boasted about the Iraq pull-out. What he did not say, however, was that pulling troops out too quickly allowed al-Qaeda back into the country and now threatens the carefully-constructed peace. On top of that, the Vice President attacked Ryan on the Republican’s legacy of war. “No, we can’t afford that”, he apparently said when George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Too bad that, in fact, Biden voted in favour of both the Afghanistan and Iraq resolutions which authorised military action.

Post-revisionism at its finest.

In sum, Biden’s performance was embarrassing and unprofessional. One can engage in serious debate or mock and ridicule one’s opponent. The Vice President clearly chose the latter approach. He may have won the drama class award but Ryan convinced with facts and figures.

The Collapse of Obama’s Foreign Policy

Nations that enjoy the benefits of freedom and prosperity have the greatest responsibility to protect these principles at home and abroad. America is the most powerful nation on Earth and remains the one most indispensable in world affairs.

Its leadership is essential. Isolationism is not an option.

Of course, America shall not carry the flag of liberty alone. We must work hand in hand, stand shoulder to shoulder to face the most terrifying threats which are all too real. Those threats must be met with decisive action, willingness to withstand criticism, and courage.

Under the Obama administration, we have seen the devastating effect of America leading from behind. The change in the balance of power has created a much less certain and more dangerous status-quo. The resulting vacuum of power has been filled by countries that do not identify with our norms and laws and do not share our way of life, values, and virtues.

Barack Obama has left America exposed, vulnerable, and at the mercy of events, in particular in the Middle East. While it is true that the President could, only to a certain extent, have foreseen the tidal wave of change that swept across the region, his administration has reacted, at best, with a mixture of silence, indifference, and incompetence rather than a pro-active, offensive strategy to help shape the future of the region.

America’s position is as weak as it has not been in a long time. Its allies question its ability and commitment to its role as a hegemon. Its enemies treat it with contempt. Bush might have been hated but he was also feared and respected. Obama’s appeasement approach, however, has bitterly failed. Recent polls suggest that he is no less, or even more, unpopular than his controversial predecessor.

It is hard to conclude anything but that Obama’s “hand of friendship policy” equates to a car crash, ending in an embarrassing disaster. The President offered the government of Iran a fresh start, but he badly let down the Iranian people in the summer of 2009, as they tried to overthrow their oppressive regime. He also invited a high-profile delegation of the Muslim Brotherhood to Washington D.C. before elections had taken place, thus giving them legitimacy they did not deserve. Morsi’s outrageous response to attacks on Americans in Egypt has brutally exposed the zero-sum rationale that now defines the relationship between Egypt and the USA.

One the other hand, America’s partnership with its long-standing ally, Israel, has been badly damaged. Certainly, Netanyahu shares some responsibility for the crisis of relations between the two countries but Obama, more than almost any other President before him, has undermined the strong commitment and deep trust that usually characterised the American-Israeli relationship.

The winners are reactionary-pariah regimes like Iran, which has exploited the rift in the Western-Israeli alliance to push forward with its nuclear programme. Iran has exploited America’s defensive strategy in Syria in order to prop up Assad’s regime. Instead of taking the opportunity to topple Ahmadinejad’s brother in arms, which would considerably weaken Iran’s position, and at the same time resolve a heart-breaking humanitarian catastrophe, Washington is committing a gross strategic error and is to be found cowering behind the Russian and Chinese veto in the UN Security Council in order to justify its inaction.

The result of American isolationism is breath-taking: Israel is left alone in dealing with Iran’s nuclear programme, the death toll in Syria has reached 45,000 or more and Turkey, a NATO member-state, is under attack. When America lost three brave servicemen in Libya and its ambassador, Christopher Stevens, the President and the Secretary of State apologised for an anti-Islam video, which was nothing but a smoke screen for pathological, deep-rooted anti-Americanism.

Hope is no strategy.