A Theme - The Return to Our Roots!

Israel and Hezballah engaged in provocations? (See 1 below.)

Another pretext for Hezballah trouble making. Ceding Shaaba Farms to Lebanon and disregarding a UN Resolution is an act of appeasement that plays into the hands of Hezballah and perpetuates feeding the Hezballah bully. (See 2 below.)

Daniel Pipes raises question about anti-regime Iranians and our pledge to protect them. (See 3 below.)

Some commentary on new political alignments, voter registration trends and the implications favor Obama but one still cannot rule out McCain's appeal with independents.

I submit a new political era is upon us and exactly which way it swings is not clear to me. For sure, Republicans are losing ground. Goldwater Conservatism, that eventually became part of the political landscape and helped Reagan and the two Bushes to win, is a thing of the past. McCain seems not to have a core theme which clearly defines where he wants to take us and, except for the meaningless and use of the word Change, neither has Obama given us insight into his own vision. Perhaps Obama has none beyond the lust for power, desire to win and the willingness to do and say anything that will further this goal.

Were I McCain I would try and craft together a theme that, ironically, would be borrowed from the black author - Alex Hailey. What this nation must do is return to its Roots! The roots and good common sense practices that made us a unique people and great nation. The more we drifted from the lessons of our roots the more we became a fractured society.

Returning to our roots would mean placing education in the forefront and insisting that every child learn our nation's history and its guiding principles, be conversant with our language, be able to read, reason and do math. It also means we would have to return to being a savings people, regain both pride in ourselves as well as our nation. The latter means a willingness to embrace patriotism and sacrifice for the common good. It would also mean rejecting dependency, accepting responsibility for our actions and recognizing government can only accomplish so much without enslaving and corrupting us while dimming the future of our progeny.

A currency that has worth is part and parcel of what it means to return to our roots.

At this given moment we are rudderless and leaderless. Not because GW has not tried but because partisanship has become paramount.

Both McCain and Obama are busily engaged in making a host of unconnected speeches on a myriad of topics but what seems lacking is a cohesive and coherent theme where all of their rhetoric is meant to take us. Rather than fight over whether to raise or lower taxes, stay or leave Iraq etc. we should be debating and deciding the best and most effective way to raise whatever taxes we wish to send to DC and what % of our GDP should be committed, what is the most rationale and achievable goal for protecting our nation and defeating our enemies etc..

Accomplishing that we can then decide where to best allocate the contemplated revenue, what role is best served by government and come to some consensus of what is a reasonable expectation of government. If we undertake this, in a start fresh manner, we would probably find we could and should eliminate half of the current government structure. For decades we have simply engaged in allocating more money, building and funding more needless and failing bureaucracies for the sole purpose of buying-off and/or catering to various constituencies whether this served the long term interests of our nation or not.

Government went off track a long time ago. We got in the routine of simply laying more spur trackage that led to dead end results, more deficit spending and increased citizen disgust.

I doubt what I propose is likely to happen because the ideological divide is too strong. One day it will come because government will fall of its own bloat dashed on the shore of discontent. Lamentably, it will probably take a series of more crisis and heightened voter dissatisfaction and will probably come later than it should and after more unnecessary trauma and decline in our standard of living and world standing.

Getting and spending we lay waste our power. Laying blame is driving the political direction. Partisanship has the upper hand and has taken over the stage. We are going through a period when out with the old is gaining momentum while the the new remains formless.

I have spent a good bit of time bashing Obama because I do not believe he is the messiah he or the press and media portray him to be. He started out as a breath of fresh air but has proven to be as stale as the breath of a typical political windbag - articulate and clever but without principle. His popularity is a function of his own newness, the press and media seeking a new darling, his being a skilled orator, voter despair and the good fortune of campaigning against an unlikeable with high negatives who fell on her own sword with an able assist from a decadent husband.

Woe unto us!(See 4 below.)

Dick



1)New Hizballah tactic: Missile ambushes for Israel aircraft and ships



Hizballah has marked the conclusion of the prisoner exchange with Israel by launching new tactics consisting of anti-air missile ambushes against Israeli Air Force flights over Lebanon and anti-ship missiles against Israel naval craft cruising off its shores.

The next day, the Lebanese army said Israeli warplanes violated Lebanese airspace in the south, Beirut, Jounieh and Dahr al-Baidar on Wednesday and early Thursday.

Israeli warships were deployed in Lebanese territorial waters from Naqoura to Tyre.

Military sources report that Hizballah has taken charge of the missile campaign while handing the Lebanese national army the task of attacking Israeli outposts at the Shaaba Farms enclave and the Mt. Dov slopes of the Hermon range.

It was clear Wednesday, July 16, that Hizballah was now calling the shots in Beirut when the president and government were forced to honor the spectacular heroes’ welcome the Shiite group organized for the five imprisoned terrorists released by Israel.

President Michel Sleiman, former chief of staff, obediently repeated his demand of the day before for Israel to evacuate its troops from the two outposts. If diplomatic efforts failed to remove them, he said, then the Lebanese army must go into action.

Military sources add that anti-air missiles and radar equipment have been installed on the Mt. Sannine peak in central Lebanon in the last few days.

From that strategic height, Hizballah is preparing to shoot down encroaching Israel flights after taking instruction from Iranian intelligence and air defense officers in tactics on how to lay missile ambushes for aerial targets.

With the help of Iranian and Syrian military experts, Hizballah has ranged the length of the Lebanese coast a dense line of 1,000 Iranian C-802 anti-ship missiles, which have a range of 120 km. Skimming 6-7 meters above the water’s surface, these missiles have certain cruise features and are extremely hard to target.

The coastal missile deployment has been boosted by new radar stations and light reconnaissance planes and helicopters for tracking the naval craft cruising opposite the Lebanese coast. The thousands of Hizballah militiamen manning the system were trained in Iran and Syria.

2) Civil Fights: Hizbullah's next pretext
By EVELYN GORDON


I wonder whether the US administration even noticed the statement made by a senior Lebanese cleric last week: that Hizbullah will liberate seven abandoned Shi'ite villages located in pre-1967 Israel. I certainly hope so - because this comment epitomizes what is wrong with Washington's policy of pressing Israel to cede Shaba Farms to Lebanon.


Shaba, located where Israel, Syria and Lebanon meet, was excluded from Israel's 2000 pullout from Lebanon because UN mapping experts ruled that it was Syrian rather than Lebanese. But Israel quit every inch of territory that the UN did deem Lebanese, and the Security Council unanimously certified this withdrawal as complete.

Immediately after the pullout, however, Hizbullah began claiming that Shaba was also Lebanese; hence Israel was still occupying Lebanon, and Hizbullah must continue attacking it. The Lebanese government backed this claim, and Syria, to fuel the flames, refused to either assert or withdraw its own claim.

All this was eminently predictable. But the world's response was shocking: Rather than upholding the Security Council's unanimous determination regarding the border, both the media and world leaders began describing Shaba as "disputed territory" and muttering about the need to resolve this new "dispute." This process culminated in Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006. The resolution, noting "a need to address urgently the causes of the current crisis," tasked the UN with delineating Lebanon's borders, "especially in those areas where the border is disputed or uncertain, including by dealing with the Shebaa [Shaba] farms area." In other words, rather than penalizing Hizbullah for the cross-border raid that sparked the war, the council voted unanimously to appease it by abandoning its own previous certification of Israel's withdrawal as complete.

UN EXPERTS are therefore currently mapping the border. But the US is not even waiting for their conclusions: It has already decided that Shaba must be given to Lebanon. Last month, the Lebanese daily Al-Hayat quoted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as telling Lebanese officials that Washington was working to secure Israel's withdrawal from Shaba. And Israeli officials told the Israeli press they had received the same message from both Rice and President George W. Bush.

Even more astonishing, however, is the reasoning Rice and Bush offer for abandoning the Security Council's unanimous decision of 2000: They want to support the Lebanese government, they say, and the best way to do so is for Israel to give Shaba to Lebanon, thereby removing Hizbullah's latest excuse for retaining its arms.

That, of course, was precisely the argument for Israel's original withdrawal from Lebanon: Once the IDF left, Hizbullah would no longer have any excuse for belligerence. But Hizbullah immediately concocted a new excuse: Shaba. Thus world leaders ought to have realized that demanding yet another Israeli withdrawal fit the classic definition of insanity: doing the same thing and expecting different results.

But since they seem incapable of connecting the dots themselves, the deputy chair of Lebanon's Supreme Shi'ite Islamic Council, Sheikh Abed al-Amir Kiblan, helpfully did it for them during a conference in southern Lebanon last week. According to the Hizbullah-affiliated daily Al-Akhbar, Kiblan declared that seven villages whose Shi'ite inhabitants fled in 1948, and which were subsequently destroyed, "must return to their owners, our country and our people," and Hizbullah's arms would achieve this.

In other words, ceding Shaba would not eliminate Hizbullah's pretext for keeping its arms; the organization already has its next pretext - this time located in pre-1967 Israel - all lined up and ready to go.

BUT PRESSING Israel to cede Shaba is worse than pointless; it is destructive. By demonstrating that no border, even if unanimously certified by the Security Council, is actually final - that each "certified" border is merely a starting point for new territorial claims - it would preclude any chance of Middle East peace.

Clearly, Israel would have no incentive for additional withdrawals under these circumstances. The point of withdrawing to a recognized international border is to a) eliminate your enemy's reasons for hostilities and b) ensure the world's backing should your enemy nevertheless continue hostilities. If instead, the world views continued attacks against Israel as grounds for redrawing the international border in the aggressor's favor, then from Israel's standpoint, withdrawing is counterproductive: It simply invites further salami-style territorial losses.

Even worse, however, a Hizbullah victory over Shaba would eliminate other countries' incentive to restrain their own radical organizations. Why should they, if a mere eight years of hostilities by such an organization are sufficient to get the world to back a new territorial claim? This is especially true because in most of Israel's neighbors, hatred for Israel remains intense. A Pew Global Research poll from last year, for instance, found that more than 70 percent of Egyptians, Jordanians and Palestinians believe that Palestinians' "rights and needs" cannot be met unless Israel is eradicated.

THUS IF Hizbullah's tactic succeeds, it would be a win-win proposition for every government in the Middle East: They could simultaneously satisfy their populations by allowing hostilities with Israel to continue, retain international backing by pleading inability to control the radicals and expand their borders at Israel's expense in the bargain, by claiming that additional Israeli concessions are needed to persuade the radicals to stop fighting.

Moreover, by effectively overturning the long-standing UN principle that acquiring territory through force is unacceptable, ceding Shaba is liable to foment further conflict worldwide. After all, if Hizbullah's cross-border aggression is grounds for the world to demand that Israel give Lebanon additional territory, why should other countries hungry for a bit of their neighbors' territory not adopt the same tactic? Just allow an armed organization to perpetrate cross-border raids, claim inability to control it and then demand some of the neighbor's land to "eliminate the organization's pretext for keeping its arms." What could be simpler?

It is rare that a single decision contains the potential for sowing so much havoc. But unless the US, and the world, understand that appeasing Hizbullah at Israel's expense will only invite further aggression, Shaba could well prove the spark that ignites a chain reaction of international conflicts round the globe.

3) Will Washington Betray Anti-Regime Iranians?
By Daniel Pipes

As the United Nations mandate that legitimizes the presence of U.S forces in Iraq expires on December 31, 2008, a humanitarian and strategic disaster is coming into view. The fate of about 3,500 anti-regime Iranians will be decided in the course of status-of-forces negotiations between Washington and Baghdad.


They are members of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK; it is also called the People's Mojahedin of Iran, or PMOI), the leading Iranian opposition group. Based at Camp Ashraf in central Iraq where they are recognized as "protected persons" under the Fourth Geneva Convention, they have since 2004 been under the protection of U.S. military forces. According to the Convention Against Torture of 1984, to which the U.S. government is a party, expiration of the UN mandate does not end the American obligation to continue to protect MEK members in Iraq.

Further, the MEK's network of supporters inside Iran have provided invaluable intelligence. For example, it exposed Tehran's nuclear ambitions and its shipments of roadside bombs to Iraq. Recognizing this assistance, a "Memorandum for the Record" by Lt. Col. Julie S. Norman dated August 24, 2006, noted that "The PMOI has always warned against the Iranian regime's meddling and played a positive role in exposing the threats and dangers of such interventions; their intelligence has been very helpful in this regard and in some circumstances has helped save the lives of [U.S.] soldiers."

Although the State Department still lists the MEK as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), that will likely end in October, for it no longer meets the terrorism criteria, having renounced terrorism, not conducted operations for many years, lacking the capability to conduct future operations, and not threatening the security of the United States. Gen. Raymond Odierno, soon to be the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, already in May 2003 questioned the MEK's designation as an FTO: "I would say that any organization that has given up their equipment to the coalition clearly is cooperating with us, and I believe that that should lead to a review of whether they are still a terrorist organization or not."

Since then, an interagency group of the U.S. government, led by the FBI, has exonerated the Iranians at Ashraf of terrorism. After a British court ruled that the group was not "concerned in terrorism," the U.K. government in June removed the group from its terrorist list.

Naturally, the expulsion of the MEK from Iraq ranks as Tehran's top demand of both Baghdad and Washington. The Iranian regime is determined to destroy its main opponent and, with some success, has pressured the Iraqi government to disband Camp Ashraf and turn MEK members over to Iran. Iraqi politicians sympathetic to Tehran have joined in this call, including leaders of the United Iraqi Alliance and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

Then, on July 9, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said that the Iraqi government had decided to expel members of the MEK. The Iranian ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kezemi-Qomi, specified that the Iraqi cabinet had agreed quickly to expel the MEK from Iraq. Iran's Jame Jam television channel reported on July 6 that "American military forces have announced their readiness to hand over" Camp Ashraf to Baghdad, which gave the MEK six months to leave its territory.

Should these reports be true (and it bears noting that prior such statements had little operational effect), they imply either the handover of unarmed Ashraf residents to Iraqi forces or their expulsion to Iran. In either case, a full-scale slaughter, whether by Tehran's proxies in Iraq or by Tehran itself, appears likely. Inspired by such a success, Tehran's ambitions in Iraq would undoubtedly grow further.

The Bush administration has stayed silent about these developments but it has the duty and the interest – based on its humanitarian commitments, its international law obligations, and its need for allies against Tehran – to insist in its status-of-forces negotiations with Baghdad that MEK members at Camp Ashraf remain under the protection of the U.S. military and that they be free to leave Camp Ashraf.

After delisting the Mujahedeen-e Khalq as an FTO, Washington should use the regime in Tehran's near-pathological fears by threatening to meet with it and help its public relations efforts. This is the easiest, most effective way to intimidate the Islamic Republic of Iran.

4) A New Electorate in the Making?
By Rhodes Cook

Speculation abounds these days about whether this fall's presidential election will produce a dramatically different electoral map than the virtually static one of the last two contests. Will Colorado and Virginia lead an array of longtime Republican states that might be won this time by Democrat Barack Obama? Or might Michigan and Pennsylvania be in the vanguard of Democratic strongholds picked off by Republican John McCain?

Those are among the more intriguing questions as the 2008 general election campaign heats up. But one thing's for sure: changes in the electoral map require some alterations in the electorate itself. And that seems to be happening.

In the 29 states (plus the District of Columbia) where voter affiliation is kept by party, the Democrats have scored perceptible gains since the presidential election of 2004 while the Republicans have suffered significant losses. To be specific, the number of registered Democrats in party registration states has grown by nearly 700,000 since President George W. Bush was reelected in November 2004, while the total of registered Republicans has declined by almost 1 million.

To be sure, the changes have taken place within a huge pool of voters that totals 96 million in the party registration states. In short, even with the loss of nearly a million voters, the number of registered Republicans is still 97 percent as large as it was at the time of President Bush's reelection.

Yet this overall trend--Democrats up, Republicans down--is also mirrored in many of the states that already have been identified as battlegrounds for 2008. And with only a comparative handful of votes needed to swing key states such as Iowa and Nevada the Democrats' way, the latest registration numbers can only fuel the party's considerable optimism.


There are a variety of reasons why the Democrats are gaining new voters, starting with demographic change. In fast-growing Nevada, for instance, a 4,400-vote registration advantage for the Republicans in November 2004 has been transformed into an imposing registration edge of more than 55,000 for the Democrats. That represents nearly three times Bush's margin of victory in Nevada four years ago.

In states that voted near the end of the primary calendar this spring, the spirited Democratic contest between Obama and Hillary Clinton brought tens of thousands of new voters into the party's ranks. In Pennsylvania, there was a Democratic registration surge of more than 300,000 in the six months between November 2007 and the April presidential primary. In Oregon, Democratic registrations increased by more than 100,000 between last November and the May primary. In both states, which went narrowly for Democrat John Kerry in 2004, the number of registered Republicans conspicuously dropped during the same per.

And there are states where Democratic gains seem related less to the excitement of the recent Clinton-Obama contest than to the general nature of the times - in which President Bush enjoys little support beyond the GOP base and the appeal of the Republican "brand" is questioned even by party loyalists.

Case in point: Iowa. At the time of the state's precinct caucuses in early January, the number of registered Democrats across the state was essentially unchanged from the 2004 election. But in the months since the caucuses, Democratic registrations have surged by nearly 70,000, while the Republicans have gained barely 7,000 voters - all this in a state that Bush carried in 2004 by barely 10,000 votes.

The same Democratic registration trend is evident on an even larger scale in California. Since the state's presidential primary in early February, Democratic registrations have mushroomed - growing by more than 300,000, while Republican registrations have increased by just 15,000. The disparity underscores why California's 55 electoral votes should be safely found once again in the Democratic column this fall.

To make matters worse for the Republicans, they continue to follow the path to obscurity in much of the Northeast, an area of the country where just a half century ago the GOP's then-large moderate wing was rooted. Nowadays, barely one quarter of all registered voters in New York are Republicans. In Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the GOP share now is down to 12 percent or less.

The saving grace for Republicans is that this does not appear to be a "base" election like the two won by George W. Bush. In 2000 and particularly 2004, both parties emphasized registering and turning out their own voters. This time, independents will be extremely important - a group that comprises roughly a quarter of the voters in party registration states. McCain's longtime appeal to independents gives him an opportunity to offset losses caused by a shrinking GOP base.

Voter registration tallies will be updated on a regular basis between now and the election as both parties and their allies become fully engaged in registering new voters. But in a campaign that is already uphill for McCain and the Republicans, this is another important area where they will be playing catch up.