Obama,Michelle, Hillary and Bill! Woe is us!

Two interesting op ed in today's WSJ. One by April speaker, Bret Stephens, (See 1 below.)

The second is by William McGurn. He writes about McClellan missing the fact that GW switched gears, perhaps later than he should have, but GW acted decisively by firing Rumsfeld, getting a new General to implement a different strategy which is now producing long sought results. Consequently, McGurn concludes, McClellan missed the entire surge and was closed minded to GW's re-thinking. McGurn makes a very valid and telling point.

The problem is, the media, press, anti-war crowd and GW's own failings permitted them to be able to put the "bad mouth" on him and anything GW he does will, therefore not be viewed objectively. GW will receive no passes or benefits of doubt. Historians will have that job, will eventually analyze his achievements and mistakes, sort them out and will undoubtedly elevate his place in history. However, GW must be seen to do something more effective and convincing vis a vis Iran, for historians to do this.
It would also follow that something of a comparable nature towards N Korea would be a positive as well.

Though time is running out GW might still fool us and some of my Israeli sources believe something along those lines might be in the making. Certainly, what could be Olmert's last visit to DC as PM, this week is focused on Iran. (See 2 below.)

Palestinian text books continue their blatant and hateful portrayals. Hamas' victory reversed Abbas' efforts to soften their content.(See 3 below.)

Previous e mail from fellow memo reader regarding reversing PIN is not so per another memo reader. (See 4 below.)

In the next 72 hours or less several things will have become fact.

a) Obama will assuredly have become his party's nominee and every liberal will be ecstatic over the fact that the first African American will be running for the presidency whether qualified or not. The guilt of slavery and treatment of blacks will be assuaged and our nation's conscience will, in the immortal words of Rev. King, be free at last. My view is that Rev. King would have been a far better candidate than Obama but tragically fate did not allow that.

b) Having been run out of his church by party supers the question then becomes can a candidate with no church affiliation be elected? Will Obama have to quickly join another church? Perhaps to garner the Jewish vote he will join a synagogue.

c) Having been forced our of the church of his choice for over 20 years, will the same party supers force him to marry a white woman by the name of Hillary and make her his Veep, for the sake of unity? That is a bit stickier because Obama would have to live with Michelle as well as Bill and I just can't get a picture of the four of them sitting in a big canoe. Why? Well for several reasons. First, Bill might hit on Michelle. He's been known to do that you know. Second, Hillary might not allow Obama to paddle and thus, Obama might come across to those of his own race as having evidenced a lack of spine for the second time or is a third or fourth?

d) Democrats, the press and media want desperately to win, as do Republicans but they can't figure out a way to demonstrate similar passion because they are unwilling to or incapable of playing hard ball. Therefore, the press and media will find every way to demonstrate that Obama's lack of experience, his inability to make decisions that demand courage, his utter lack of how to deal with our enemies and his oratorical skills are qualities that are absolutely essential for success in one seeking change. Why? Because everything about our nation's direction is bad and, like a soiled baby, is in need of changing. The economy, the war, the dollar, the housing market, our inability to compete, the fact that no one loves us must be evident to all. Woe is us!

Dick


1) GLOBAL VIEW
By BRET STEPHENS



There Is a Military Solution to Terror

Sadr City in Baghdad, the northeastern districts of Sri Lanka and the Guaviare province of Colombia have little in common culturally, historically or politically. But they are crucial reference points on a global map in which long-running insurgencies suddenly find themselves on the verge of defeat.

For the week of May 16-23, there were 300 "violent incidents" in Iraq. That's down from 1,600 last June and the lowest recorded since March 2004. Al Qaeda has been crushed by a combination of U.S. arms and Sunni tribal resistance. On the Shiite side, Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army was routed by Iraqi troops in Basra and later crumbled in its Sadr City stronghold.

In Colombia, the 44-year-old FARC guerrilla movement is now at its lowest ebb. Three of its top commanders died in March, and the number of FARC attacks is down by more than two-thirds since 2002. In the face of a stepped-up campaign by the Colombian military (funded, equipped and trained by the U.S.), the group is now experiencing mass desertions. Former FARC leaders describe a movement that is losing any semblance of ideological coherence and operational effectiveness.

In Sri Lanka, a military offensive by the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has wrested control of seven of the nine districts previously held by the rebel group LTTE, better known as the Tamil Tigers. Mr. Rajapaksa now promises victory by the end of the year, even as the Tigers continue to launch high-profile terrorist attacks.

All this is good news in its own right. Better yet, it explodes the mindless shibboleth that there is "no military solution" when it comes to dealing with insurgencies. On the contrary, it turns out that the best way to end an insurgency is, quite simply, to beat it.

Why was this not obvious before? When military strategies fail – as they did in Vietnam while the U.S. pursued the tactics of attrition, or in Iraq prior to the surge – the idea that there can be no military solution has a way of taking hold with civilians and generals eager to deflect blame. This is how we arrived at the notion that "political reconciliation" is a precondition of military success, not a result of it.

There's also a tendency to misjudge the aims and ambitions of the insurgents: To think they can be mollified via one political concession or another. Former Colombian president Andres Pastrana sought to appease the FARC by ceding to them a territory the size of Switzerland. The predictable result was to embolden the guerrillas, who were adept at sensing and exploiting weakness.

The deeper problem here is the belief that the best way to deal with insurgents is to address the "root causes" of the grievance that purportedly prompted them to take up arms. But what most of these insurgencies seek isn't social or moral redress: It's absolute power. Like other "liberation movements" (the PLO comes to mind), the Tigers are notorious for killing other Tamils seen as less than hard line in their views of the conflict. The failure to defeat these insurgencies thus becomes the primary obstacle to achieving a reasonable political settlement acceptable to both sides.

This isn't to say that political strategies shouldn't be pursued in tandem with military ones. Gen. David Petraeus was shrewd to exploit the growing enmity between al Qaeda and their Sunni hosts by offering former insurgents a place in the country's security forces as "Sons of Iraq." (The liberal use of "emergency funds," aka political bribes, also helped.) Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has more than just extended amnesty for "demobilized" guerrillas; he's also given them jobs in the army.

But these political approaches only work when the intended beneficiaries can be reasonably confident that they are joining the winning side. Nobody was abandoning the FARC when Mr. Pastrana lay prostrate before it. It was only after Mr. Uribe turned the guerrilla lifestyle into a day-and-night nightmare that the movement's luster finally started to fade.

Defeating an insurgency is never easy even with the best strategies and circumstances. Insurgents rarely declare surrender, and breakaway factions can create a perception of menace even when their actual strength is minuscule. It helps when the top insurgent leaders are killed or captured: Peru's Shining Path, for instance, mostly collapsed with the capture of Abimael Guzmán. Yet the Kurdish PKK is now resurgent nine years after the imprisonment of Abdullah Ocalan, thanks to the sanctuary it enjoys in Northern Iraq.

Still, it's no small thing that neither the PKK nor the Shining Path are capable of killing tens of thousands of people and terrorizing whole societies, as they were in the 1980s. Among other things, beating an insurgency allows a genuine process of reconciliation and redress to take place, and in a spirit of malice toward none. But those are words best spoken after the terrible swift sword has done its work.

2) PM to discuss Iranian threat with Rice


Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was assured a proper reception from President Bush and other US officials Tuesday when he arrived in Washington.

He planned to discuss Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and the Iranian nuclear threat with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Bush, and he will address the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC during a three-day visit.

Israeli newspapers have reported that Olmert also hopes to acquire a sophisticated US missile defense system, advanced radar and new warplanes.

The prime minister did not emerge from his private quarters to speak to reporters during an overnight flight from Israel, arriving in Washington a couple of hours before dawn Tuesday.


He had afternoon meetings scheduled with AIPAC leaders and Rice and was to address the AIPAC convention in the evening. He sees Bush later in the week.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Tuesday that Bush is thinking about the Mideast peace negotiations, not Olmert's political problems. "Our focus hasn't been on that," she said. "President Bush has to keep his focus on the big picture. He's not spending a lot of time worried about that."

Olmert has tried to project a business-as-usual appearance, meeting Monday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss the status of peace talks before heading to Washington.

With Bush looking on, Olmert and Abbas relaunched peace talks last November. The two leaders have set a year-end target to reach a blueprint for peace before Bush leaves office.

3) 'Jews are vilified as killers, snakes'


Authors of Palestinian school textbooks took small steps toward softening their harsh portrayals of Jews and Israel under the rule of Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas - but progress was quickly reversed after the Islamic Hamas won a 2006 election, according to a report released on Tuesday.

The report by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE) and the American Jewish Committee looked at 120 textbooks published from 2000 to 2006 for how they perceived Jews and Israel.

The report reflects charges by Israelis that Palestinian textbooks are not in keeping with a peace process that started in 1993. Palestinians counter that Jewish Israeli students are not taught about Palestinian suffering.

Arnon Groiss, author of the report, "Palestinian Textbooks: From Arafat to Abbas and Hamas" said most of the textbooks from grade one to 10, issued under the late Yasser Arafat's rule, did not acknowledge any historical Jewish presence in ancient Palestine, nor does modern-day Israel appear on maps. Jews are vilified as schemers and killers.

But in grade 11 books issued under Abbas, there are two maps showing Israel within the so-called "green line" - the cease-fire line before the 1967 war, when Israel captured east Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The textbooks issued under Abbas' rule also include a discussion of Jewish history in the region, the report said.

However, in 2006, the Islamist Hamas came to power and issued a grade 12 textbook that dramatically reversed those steps. Jews are likened to snakes, and fighting for the sake of Palestine is praised effusively.

Mixed with anti-Semitic sentiments in the textbooks are genuine Palestinian complaints against Israel, including settlement building in areas Palestinians want for their future state, and the Israeli separation barrier, which often significantly deviates from the "green line."

"Palestinian grievances are legitimate - they were harshly hurt by Israel," said Groiss. "But if (Jewish Israelis) are only presented through that prism, that's wrong. We can't see any balance," he said.

Jamal Zakkout, spokesman for Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, said Palestinian textbooks should emphasize connection to the land "and a call for tolerance."

But Zakkout said the main cause Palestinian ill will toward Israel is not textbooks, but Israel's many checkpoints in the West Bank, the separation barrier and military operations in Palestinian towns.

4)When I saw your e-mail on this subject, I was curious about the accuracy of the reversing one's PIN. Found the following on the internet:

But first, we'll answer the most common question we receive about ATM machines: Does entering your PIN number in reverse really summon the police?

The answer is no. We started seeing the email hoaxes on this topic this past September. Although this concept seems like a good idea, and a system was actually designed to notify the police by a Chicago businessman (so there is a grain of truth to this urban legend), no such system has been implemented.

The banking industry is not interested in the technology because of the cost and because they don't believe it would work. Imagine trying to remember you PIN number backwards with a thief pointing a gun at your head. ;-)

So, simply delete these email hoaxes and don't spread them to your friends.