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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / The New Axis of Evil

The New Axis of Evil

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The smearing of Turkey picks up speed:

President Obama is contributing to the isolation of Israel, and sending a clear signal to the Turkish-Syrian-Iranian axis that their methods for ostracizing Israel will succeed, and will be met by no resistance from America.

How long before one of the Weekly Standard flunkies has a book out detailing the close relationship between Al Qaeda and Turkey?

Reader Interactions

45Comments

  1. 1.

    dmsilev

    So, the centerpiece dish at Thanksgiving will soon be known as “Freedom Fowl”?

    Liz Cheney has accomplished something over the last year or so which I didn’t think was possible, which is to make her father look good by comparison.

    dms

  4. 4.

    Mark Smeraldi

    They won’t need to use freedom fowl as they already have a surplus of liberty giblets.

  5. 5.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Liz Cheney is faulting the President for describing the loss of life as “tragic.”

    Tragedy has a well-known liberal bias.

  6. 6.

    Cat Lady

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    Makes you wonder what the bloody hell went on in that household? The Manson Family looks like the Cleavers compared to those psychopaths.

  8. 8.

    Cacti

    The Thanksgiving Turkey should be renamed “Freedom Bird”.

    I bet Barney Frank, Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer would be down with it.

  9. 9.

    Superluminar

    OT but relevant: I’ve been looking round the wingnutosphere
    for crazy takes on the Gaza stuff(I know, overexposure to DougJ posts…) and a commenter over at
    Volokh supplied this gem: ‘I wish the media would stop using “civilians” to describe the suicide activists.’

    um yeah…”suicide activists”. Sigh.

  12. 12.

    El Cid

    Once more, we learn how the Turkish terrorists attacked Israeli soldiers by positioning themselves to steal as many innocent Israeli bullets as they could.

    Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies for the Turkish ministry of justice today.
    __
    The results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, said Yalcin Buyuk, vice-chairman of the council of forensic medicine…
    __
    …He calculated that during the bloodiest part of the assault, Israeli commandos shot one person every minute. One man was fatally shot in the back of the head just two feet in front him and another was shot once between the eyes. He added that as well as the fatally wounded, 48 others were suffering from gunshot wounds and six activists remained missing, suggesting the death toll may increase.

    Thank the heavens that Israeli forces are known for their incredible, magnanimous restraint. Other, less humanitarian forces might have shot each victim a dozen or more times.

  13. 13.

    beltane

    This is beyond disgusting, and will ultimately make it impossible for any Muslim country to even consider an alliance with the United States or with Israel.

    I am afraid that unless something changes soon, the state os Israel will follow the same sad trajectory as the doomed Kingdom of Jerusalem established after the First Crusade.

  16. 16.

    Brian J

    Wait a minute, Turkey and al Qaeda aren’t already connected? I thought that since the country was near the Middle East, it should just be considered the same. Lots of brown people and so on, you know?

    Where’s the evidence that this is the wrong way to look at Turkey?

  17. 17.

    beltane

    @El Cid: The whole world is now part of the Axis of Evil. They will all soon be crushed by the celestial armies of Jehovah as Redneck Jesus assumes his robe and crown and slays ye damned who will not accept him as their Lord and Savior.

    The main part of our foreign policy appears to be based upon an ignorant reading of a lurid book of prophecy written by a crazy man on the island of Patmos almost two-thousand years ago.

  19. 19.

    jwb

    Absolutely predictable and yet here we are, and it’s not at all clear what we do about it

  20. 20.

    Citizen_X

    The “Turkish-Syrian-Iranian axis?” Good grief. And what about that evil alliance of several countries that Turkey belongs to, what’s it called? Oh yeah: NATO. Surely we have to go to war against those people!

  21. 21.

    Xero

    Turkey is the new Iraq. If a Palinite takes the White House in ’12, That’s who we’ll invade if Iran or Syria attack Israel.

  22. 22.

    gocart mozart

    http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2010/06/eyewitnesses-both-activists-and-reporters-contradict-israeli-account.html

    There’s a remarkable consistency among eyewitness accounts that Isral supporters will doubtless put down to complicity and others will ascribe to telling the truth. What’s certain is that these accounts are so very different from the official Israeli line that we have to question Israel’s credibility as an honest reporter of events as much as we question the eyewitnesses – perhaps even more so, since many of these witnesses are reporters with reputations for impartial accuracy rather than activists or soldiers following orders.

  24. 24.

    Jay C

    Well, John: to be fair, this is quote from Liz Cheney; a woman whose credibility quotient really ought to be quantified by scientists, and adopted as the new standard for Absolute Zero.

    That Cheney fille would spout belligerent ignorant nonsense on foreign affairs she knows little about is just par-for-the-course; that the WaPo would publish her drivel is disgraceful, but unsurprising: the saddest part is that that there is unlikely to be any significant pushback in the “MSM”.

    More likely a series of articles featuring the Siege of Vienna and the Massacre of Chios…..

  25. 25.

    El Cid

    @gocart mozart: Remember, Israeli and U.S. pro-militarists did nothing but mock those complaining when Israeli forces shelled a long-standing UN refugee camp in Lebanon in 1996 killing over 100 people including UN officials, and a UN investigation found that it was impossible to claim as an accident (particularly given Israeli overflights at that same time with helicopters and spy planes.

    Needless to say, nothing whatsoever happened internationally and the Israeli government blew off criticism.

    I mean, not unless you count Hezbollah driving Israeli forces militarily out of South Lebanon for the first time since the 1982 invasion [albeit quite a bit later], and then forming part of the Lebanese coalition government. Which of course happened precisely because of constant Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians supposedly in order to pressure them against Hezbollah. Victory once again achieved, no?

  26. 26.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @El Cid:

    One man was fatally shot in the back of the head just two feet in front him and another was shot once between the eyes.

    What would you do if a terror-activist was trying to violently head-butt you, and you had nothing to defend yourself with except a pistol or assault rifle?
    The head can be a deadly weapon in the hands of a trained operator.
    Serves them right for bringing advanced cranial weaponry on-board the ship if you ask me.
    If they were true civilians, they would have left their heads at home rather than trying to smuggle them into Gaza.

    /apologist

  28. 28.

    Brian J

    @Jay C:

    I really, really don’t get how some of these opinion pages run. There are supposed to be editors, and while nobody can know everything, is it really that hard to learn over the course of a career and/or ask someone who might know more than you? I also understand that while we might find it pointless to run a piece on the need for tax cuts and how, in a theoretical sense, it’s bad for government to use our money, others might like it. But allowing people to express their opinions doesn’t mean they can make up their facts. Why is it so fucking hard for these people to say no to someone who has a credibility problem?

  29. 29.

    someguy

    Helen Thomas has it right. She failed to mention that Washington is occupied territory too, however.

  30. 30.

    Maude

    @beltane:
    Thank you for saying what I have thought for a long time about John and the visions. Why they ever put that in the New Testament is beyond me. It has caused nothing but trouble. I wonder if it was put in to compete with Ezekiel.

  31. 31.

    Jeffro

    @Citizen_X: Exactly. Turkish-Syrian-Iranian axis saywhatnow??!?

    Since we are in NATO with Turkey, shouldn’t it really be American-Turkish-Syrian-Iranian axis?

  32. 32.

    Citizen_X

    @Superluminar:

    ‘I wish the media would stop using “civilians” to describe the suicide activists.’

    Damn straight. What the hell is wrong with you terrorist sympathizers, anyway? These people had kitchen knives.
    KITCHEN KNIVES!

  33. 33.

    El Cid

    @someguy:

    Helen Thomas has it right. She failed to mention that Washington is occupied territory too, however.

    As much as I am for decolonization, I don’t think advising Israeli Jews to go back to Europe is much help. It may be fair to throw out to people saying that the Palestinians should just all move / be thrown out into Jordan / Syria / Palestine / undefined “Arab” lands. Likewise, I never found it sane or helpful to advise those European-originating citizens of South Africa to fix apartheid by leaving Africa. Though in reality, fewer and fewer Jews of European origin are interested in migrating to Israel.

  34. 34.

    El Cid

    @Citizen_X: It is also well-established that the construction of kitchens is a precursor of the presence of kitchen knives. Hence, the need for a blockade of kitchen-related materials.

  35. 35.

    salacious crumb

    y’all didnt know there was a relationship between Al Qaeda and Turkey?! Erdogan is Muslim and so is Bin Laden. This is much evidence is enough establish. Now we have to somehow link all of this to Nikki Haley if she doesnt denounce Turkey.

  37. 37.

    wrb

    I gave up watching the Celtics.Lakers game after the third period because I figured the Celtics were doomed and I didn’t want the vicarious misery.

    I’ve given up watching Israel for similar reasons.

  38. 38.

    Jay C

    @Brian J:

    Yes, you would think that the editorial/op-ed editors at the nation’s capital’s premier newspaper would be just a little more circumspect in publishing ignorant diatribes on foreign affairs from out-of-work hacks from the out-of-power party, wouldn’t you?

    Unfortunately, the Washington Post has long since devolved into just another corporate-media shill for the Right: content to live off their long-gone Watergate reputation while having, in fact, given up “speaking truth to power” for “kissing the ass of power” many years ago.

    I mean, they are still a major newspaper (that rare and endangered species!) and miles better than their crosstown “competition”, the (Moonie) Times; but they are still, almost reflexively, harsh and/or pessimistic about Democrats, and deferential to Republicans: giving space to idiots like Liz Cheney is only “normal”.

  39. 39.

    toujoursdan

    Nice to see that some media outlets are asking questions. The CBC had a good clip on how Israel is moulding public opinion by suppressing all the footage that shows the activists hurt or killed.

    You Tube: CBC The National

    Of course, they’ll probably get their funding cut over this.

  40. 40.

    Derek

    @Jay C:

    Unfortunately, the Washington Post every newspaper has long since devolved into just another corporate-media shill

    I believe the phrase is, “fixed that for you.”

  41. 41.

    New Yorker

    I sometimes wonder if the Warsaw Pact-era governments of Poland or Czechoslovakia or the like were as abjectly subservient to Moscow as the clowns in Washington are to Netanyahu.

    Can I please have a political party that will stand up for AMERICA? Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans seem particularly interested in doing so here.

  43. 43.

    Roger Moore

    @Citizen_X:

    What the hell is wrong with you terrorist sympathizers, anyway? These people had kitchen knives.

    Remember, though, that a group of al Qaeda terrorists were able to take over airplanes and crash them into buildings armed with nothing but box cutters, so those kitchen knives are a big step up in lethality. The next thing you know, these terrorists will be crashing their massive transport ships into Gaza armed with loads of dangerous terrorist materials like concrete, spices, and musical instruments, and the consequences are going to be terrible.

  44. 44.

    PaulW

    By the time the neocon smears are over, the only nations NOT in the Axis of Ebil will be Israel, the United States, and Fiji. Wait, did Fiji pull their 5 troops from Iraq yet?

  45. 45.

    sdstarr

    Remember, Turkey is our NATO ally. Has Israel pledged to regard an attack on the US as an attack on Israel? I think not. If North Korea lobs a missile at the US Turkey is obliged by the NATO treaty to join in the attack on North Korea. Israel is not.

    So who’s the real ally?

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