Who Is Obama? - Where Does He Want to Take America?

Perhaps premature and bleak but I do believe a confrontation could well be inevitable. Radical Arabs will take their time and co-ordinate their efforts and when the opportunity comes could strike Israel.

On the other hand Arab nations that are free and seeking a betterment in their economic circumstances might be more concerned about what they could lose and thus be reluctant to follow radical voices projecting all their problems on Israel.

Now is the time for Israel to make every effort to offer economic help to Egypt and to enter into programs that will bring betterment to Egyptians through joint ventures etc.

Should Israel ever be under an existential threat I believe a nuclear response, on the part of Israel, is not out of the question. First a warning. The second for real. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Our economy is improving and the spending, to make sure this happens, is still in force.

From a long term standpoint, it is critical we get control over our deficit, strengthen the dollar, increase consumer savings and address the various problems that continue to reduce our significance as a major player in world global growth. Our window for overcoming these troublesome and intractable problems is narrow and closing fast.

I would hope Republicans will be responsive and rather than take the easy rooute by making inane cuts across the board, set forth sensible policies and eliminate entire programs so that voters are given a comprehensive and cohesive sense of what Republicans deem are wise policies going forward.

We have a feckless president who has no energy policy, yet proposes spending trillions in his budget. He is more interested in spending money to favor certain political constituencies , ie. high speed trans-national rail system. If you think a bridge to no where is a waste this idea swamps it.

We have entitlement and government hiring programs that must be brought under control.

The fact that the New York Stock Exchange might be acquired and move out of New York is symptomatic of a nation whose future is not as bright as it once was or could be if we had determined and competent leadership and a political system that was responsive to national needs rather than re-election.

There is nothing we can do to contain the growth of China, India and Brazil but what we can do is to try and match and/or stay even with them. We gave them sound Capitalistic advice, they took it, we forgot what we told them and proceeded to elect a president who headed us in the totally opposite direction of our own advice. Now we are paying mightily for this emotional knee jerk lack of vision.

Another sign of our growing irrelevance is our lack of leverage in Egypt with Mubarack's ouster. For all our billions of aid, we historically have taken the easy path of supporting dictators because it served our immediate interests but costs us seriously in the long run. When dictators are eventually overthrown the people, who take to the street to ouster them, feel no allegiance to us even though they claim they are seeking freedom and the establishment of democratic regimes.

Obama went to the Middle East shortly after becoming president made speeches that could be likened to kindling but never did much to press his message forward. When the Egyptians 'matched' the kindling Obama's lack of a developed foreign policy was exposed and consumed by the fire.

Far too often our diplomatic efforts place us in conflict with our long term values and what we perceive are our short term national interests.

What has happened in Egypt could eventually have implications for the direction Iraq eventually takes as well and could serve to undercut any benefit we might have gained from GW's effort to democratize that nation in addition to Obama's decision to implement a 'quick' withdrawal. . On the other hand one could legitimately argue that the 'democratization' of Iraq was a signal to Egyptians and eventually to the entire region that Arabs and Muslims can rid themselves of their oppressive and backward leadership and enter the 21st century.

What will be interesting to observe is whether the Egyptian Street cease their protesting and return to work. Often successes achieved by rioting are undercut by 'overstaying' - the same problem that caused the tyrant they overthrew to fall from grace.

The Saudis have to be quaking in their gold threaded robes because it is obvious Obama will most likely throw them under the bus, after previously physically and unabashedly bowing to them, given the opportunity.

As for Israel, Netanyahu should also be having 'third' thoughts about Obama.

Perhaps, and hopefully, all will go well. Hoever, unless Egypt's economy improves the prospects for Egyptians are problematical at best. The radicals will wait in the wings for their turn and opportunity to benefit from any failed future expectations.

The Egyptian military is now controlled by younger colonels and it is yet to be determined whether they will continue to play a subservient role and be led by the old military guard more associated with Mubarak and Sulieman etc. Young turks eventually want their day in the sun and it could be adverse to our interests as well as Israel's. (See 1b below.)

A sense of betterment in the economic lives of Egyptians is the best anti-dote to continued chaos and the disintegration of Egyptian society.
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Do we really know Obama and what he intends for our nation beyond his platitudinous words? Hell is paved with good intentions and this author believes Obama seeks to change us through re-distribution and thus, is very opposed to Obama's vision.

You decide! (See 2 and 2b below.)
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Col. Lacey and myself seem on the same track when it comes to what Israel, and more specifically the West, must do to turn the collapse of Arab civilization into a positive direction. (See 3 below.)
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James Lewis offers a take on Obama's actions to overthrow Mubarak that are worth considering. You decide! (See 4 below.)
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The essential meaning of multi-culturalism should be thoughtfully dissected by Conservatives and not rejected simply because progressives have defined an aspect of it in ways that have been detrimental. A very thoughtful article and a worthy read. (See 5 below.)
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Egypt's a year from now - Pipes and Ehteshami's thinking: "In short, we both agree that after a "long and painful" year, Egypt will, at best, find itself "becoming a democracy." I thank him for helping me make the case that Egypt will remain autocratic in twelve months' time." (See 6 below.)
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Business is not getting 'in Obama's game' because it does not trust him.

The 'fat cats' who run America's businesses have observed Obama's wasteful spending, his treatment of bondholders and they are neither soothed nor beguiled by his recently adopted 'siren sweet talk.' (See 7 below.)
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Dick
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1)Ex-Israeli Official: Mideast Dominoes Point to War
By David A. Patten

George Birnbaum, an international political consultant who once served as chief of staff to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is warning that a domino-style collapse of moderate Arab regimes could lead Israel to war.

Birnbaum, an expert in global politics, cited Friday’s collapse of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and the growing turmoil in nearby Jordan as ominous signs for Israel.

Israel’s neighbor on the other side of the West Bank is ruled by King Abdullah II, a constitutional monarch who is Hashemite, a minority. Abdullah reigns over a population that is 70 percent Palestinian.

“He had to relieve his government a few weeks ago,” Birnbaum told host Stuart Varney of Fox News on Friday. “If that country goes, and in Bahrain and other countries, suddenly you’re going to find Israel in a similar position it was in 1948, where it’ll be isolated, surrounded by Islamic countries looking to see its destruction -- with the one exception that Israel has the ability to defend itself this time.

“But that creates another problem,” he added, “which is a regional if not greater war that the world will have to face.”

Birnbaum said Israel could be “in great danger.”


1a) Mubarak's departure thwarted Israeli strike on Iran
Israel will find it difficult to take action far to the east when it can not rely on the tacit agreement to its actions on its western border.
By Aluf Benn

Most Israelis were either born or immigrated to this country during the period in which Hosni Mubarak ruled Egypt. This is the reality they know. And this is the significance of the stability that Mubarak provided them with.

In all the upheavals that took place in the Middle East over the past three decades, the Egyptian regime appeared to be a powerful rock. The leaders of Israel knew that their left flank was secure as they went out to war, built settlements and negotiated peace on the other fronts. The friction in relations between Jerusalem and Cairo, however frustrating it was at times, did not undermine the foundations of the strategic alliance created by the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement.

The resignation of Mubarak following 18 days of protests in Egypt ushers in a new era of uncertainty for the entire region, and for Israel in particular. The long reign of the Egyptian leader was not unusual for the Middle East. Hafez Assad led Syria for 30 years, like Mubarak in Egypt; King Hussein and Yasser Arafat ruled for 40 years. But when they stepped off the stage, their legacy was secure. Hussein and Assad passed the reins on to their sons, and Arafat was replaced by his veteran deputy, Mahmoud Abbas. This is why the changing of the guard in Jordan, Syria and the Palestinian Authority were perceived by Israel as natural, arousing no particular concern. After all, the familiar is not all that frightening.

But this is not the situation in Egypt today. Mubarak was thrown out, before he could prepare one of his close aides or his son to take over as president. The army commanders who took over are trying to calm the Egyptian public and the international community with promises that they have no intentions of setting up a new junta in Cairo, but rather, plan to pass to transfer authority to a civilian government through free elections. But no one, including the generals in the Supreme Council of the Armed forces, knows how and when the regime transition will play out. History teaches us that after revolutions, it takes a number of years of domestic infighting before the new regime stabilizes.

This uncertainty troubles Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His reactions during the first days of the revolution exposed deep anxieties that the peace agreement with Egypt might collapse. He tried to delay Mubarak's end as long as possible, but to no avail, and on Saturday he praised the Egyptian military's announcement that all international agreements would be respected, including the peace treaty with Israel.

Netanyahu is afraid of the possibility that Egypt may become an Islamic republic, hostile to Israel - a sort of new Iran but much closer physically. He hopes this doesn't happen and that Egypt will follow Turkey's footsteps, preserving formal ties with Israel, embassies, air connections and trade, even as it expresses strong criticism of its treatment the Palestinians.

The best case scenario, in his view, even if it is less likely, is that Egypt will become like Turkey before the era of Erdogan: a pro-American country, controlled by the military.

Netanyahu shared with Mubarak his concerns about the growing strength of Iran. Egypt played a key role in the Sunni, the "moderate," axis, which lined up alongside Israel and the United States against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his allies in Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip.

The toppling of the regime in Cairo does not alter this strategic logic. The revolutionaries at Tahrir Square were motivated by Egyptian national pride and not by their adoration of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Whoever succeeds Mubarak will want to follow this line, even bolster Egyptian nationalism, and not transform Egypt into an Iranian satellite. This does not mean that Mubarak's successor will encourage Israel to strike the Iranian nuclear installations.

On the contrary: they will listen to Arab public opinion, which opposes a preemptive war against Iran. Israel will find it difficult to take action far to the east when it can not rely on the tacit agreement to its actions on its western border. Without Mubarak there is no Israeli attack on Iran. His replacement will be concerned about the rage of the masses, if they see him as a collaborator in such operation.

Whoever is opposed to a strike, or fear its consequences - even though they appear to be in favor, like Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak - now have the ultimate excuse. We wanted to strike Iran, they will write in their memoirs but we could not because of the revolution in Egypt. Like Ehud Olmert says that he nearly made peace, they will say that they nearly made war. In his departure Mubarak prevented a preemptive Israeli war. This appears to have been his last contribution to regional stability.



1b)Will an unknown officer be Egypt's next ruler? Military beefs up Sinai force


While the High Army Council will need time to fix dates for presidential and parliamentary elections and the transition to civilian government, it acted within 24hours from taking over from Hosni Mubarak to bring lawless outbreaks in Sinai under control by pumping extra strength into the peninsula on Saturday, Feb. 12.

That night Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak phoned the council head, Defense Minister Mohamed Tantawi, to thank him for transferring 900 men of two battalions of the 18th Division.

It was the second time in the eighteen days of the uprising that Israel consented to injecting military units into the peninsula whose demilitarization was enshrined in the 1979 peace treaty between the two countries. The Hamas-al Qaeda outbreaks had grown into a threat to the Egyptian presence in the strategic peninsula and to Israel's border security.

The defense minister also echoed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who earlier welcomed the military council's pledge to honor "all regional and international obligations and treaties." After a sigh of relief in Jerusalem, the prime minister said: "The longstanding peace treaty between Israel and Egypt has greatly contributed to both countries and is "the cornerstone for peace and stability in the entire Middle East."

The 76-year old Egyptian field marshal's manner in the conversation with Barak was curt and to the point rather than affable.

In North Sinai, while the army was busy lifting Mubarak out of the president palace in Cairo, armed men of the Palestinian Hamas and Bedouin militias attacked Egyptian security forces, losing 10 gunmen in the ensuing clash. A request to curb the rampage also reached the Army Council from Washington. Members of the Multinational Force policing Sinai under the peace treaty, mostly Americans and Canadians, have been locked in their camps for nearly three weeks under virtual Hamas and Bedouin siege.

The generals also went into action to restore law and order in Egypt's big cities and clean up the mess left by 18 days of round-the-clock demonstrations.

Saturday night, Tantawi held his first conversation with Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq and Interior Minister Habib El-Adli, the Mubarak-appointed ministers who have been left in place for the interim. They discussed reassigning the Interior Ministry's security and police forces to regular beats. They disappeared from city streets after mobs of protesters chased them away on Jan. 21. Now, local military commanders have informed the High Army Council that it was not the army's job to maintain law and order and they must start pulling their men out of the cities and back to barracks to keep them from scattering.

Cairo sources report division commanders did not ask for permission; they gave the high council's 25 generals due warning that the soldiers were to be phased out of the cities and it was necessary to get the police in to replace them.

This tenor of exchange placed a question mark over the measure of control the high military command exercises in the towns. There are signs that the division and brigade commanders in the field may be calling the shots in many instances. Some intelligence quarters in Washington are led to believe that the transition period may well throw up a charismatic field commander for taking over the presidential palace rather than a known civilian face.

None of the generals in the top command is either charismatic or particularly popular, certainly not the ageing Tantawi or Chief of Staff Gen. Sami Al-Anan.
The whereabouts of the deposed president are another unknown. According to one report making the rounds in Cairo Mubarak and family are not in Sharm el-Sheikh as claimed, but were flown by the army helicopter that carried him out of the capital Friday, Feb. 11, to one of the army facilities on the Red Sea coast of southern Egypt - possibly Ghardaqa - or a local luxury hotel. It was not clear whether Mubarak is the army's prisoner or the troops were hiding him for his own protection.
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2)Does Obama Want the Best for America or Does He Want to Destroy It?
By Jack Kerwick

Among pundits on the right, there has been disagreement for quite some time over the fundamental motives informing President Obama's agenda. Essentially two schools of thought on the matter have emerged.


One school insists that while the president's policy prescriptions are indeed ultimately destructive, he nevertheless genuinely believes that their implementation is what's best for the country. This is the position taken by the likes of, say, Bill O'Reilly and nationally syndicated radio talk show host Michael Medved.


Members of the other school are convinced that Obama is resolved to weaken America. Only a determination on his part to diminish the country's military and economic preeminence in the world and traditional liberties at home can account for an agenda that is so obviously destructive of the nation that we have always known. Among the most illustrious exponents of this view is Rush Limbaugh.


Adherents of the first position think that the adherents of the second line are idiotic, if not "crazy" (although, interestingly, they haven't dared to call out by name "the King of talk radio" who has been in the vanguard of advancing it); champions of the latter believe that the former are naïve and confused.


This may come as a shock to both sets of apologists, but a synthesis of their perspectives is attainable.


Though there have been more than a few thinkers who have quarreled with it, the thesis that no one ever chooses evil for its own sake has an impressive pedigree stretching back into antiquity. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Christian theorists up to the present day have affirmed that evil is always done for the sake of some perceived good -- pleasure, riches, power, fame, love, and so forth. It is in light of this principle that we can hope to go some distance in reconciling these two competing positions on Obama's intentions.


The idea that the President of the United States wakes up each morning scheming over how he may ruin the country over which he presides is, of course, the stuff of fantasy. Contrary to what the Michael Medveds insinuate, however, I don't think for a second that either Rush or the legions of people who share his view of Obama entertain this view. Still, given the baldness with which Rush and others have stated their position, I suppose it lends itself to this caricature.


But it is similarly foolish to think that it is from nothing other than the union of an ignorance of the most basic economic principles and a comparable ignorance of history that the President's obviously destructive policies are begotten. Regrettably, to hear O'Reilly and Medved speak, one could be forgiven for concluding that this is what they really think.


While discussing this issue with a friend of mine recently, he reminded me of C.S Lewis' argument regarding the Jesus who is presented to us in the pages of the New Testament: either Jesus was the Son of God, as He claimed, or else He was an egomaniac or a mad man. Given the self-referential remarks that the Biblical authors attribute to Jesus, there is simply no other alternative. Likewise, my friend continued, Obama's utterances and deeds are born of either an invincible ignorance of their consequences -- in which case he is without question the most incompetent president of all time -- or a plan to ruin America -- in which case he is indeed guilty of the designs that Rush and others ascribe to him. There is no third possibility.


Or maybe there is.


Obama knows that his economic policies are productive of neither liberty as traditionally conceived by Americans nor prosperity. He would have to be, not just the most incompetent president ever, but among the most dense of human beings, for given the extensive exposure that he has had to both Keynesian and neo-Marxian philosophy -- anyone who takes the time to read his memoirs, particularly his first, and who considers the worldview of the people with whom he has surrounded himself for most of his life would know this -- he could only know by now full well the fruits that these policies promise to reap.


But from this it doesn't follow that Obama anticipates the ruination of America as such. There can be no doubt, I think, that he wants to preside over an America that is morally superior and, hence, better, than the country that elected him two years ago. The problem, though, is that the America of Obama's imaginings is radically unlike the America to which most of its citizens have an acquired affection and even more unlike the America within which their ancestors made their home. That is, the "fundamental transformation" that Obama wants to visit upon America demands nothing more or less than the death of America as it is currently constituted; only once America as a living reality is eliminated can America as Obama's ideal be substituted for it.


The philosopher Ronald Dworkin once said that "a more equal society" -- a society the resources of which are equally "distributed" -- is better than the contrary, even if its citizens prefer inequality. Anyone who has paid any attention at all to Obama must know that he couldn't agree more with this thought.


So, our president does indeed think that as a people, Americans will be "better" in the wake of the "fundamental transformation" that he wants to impose upon us. So the O'Reillys and Medveds are correct in this respect. However, neither Rush, myself, nor the large numbers of Americans who love the liberties for which our forefathers labored indefatigably to bequeath to us are likely to receive much consolation from this. After all, the fact remains that his intentions aside, our president is determined to see the historic nation that is the real America go the way of the dinosaur.

2b)Ideologically-driven strategic ineptitude
By Caroline B. Glick


Many believe that the Obama administration are just screw-ups. If only that were the case.

In the midst of the political turmoil engulfing Egypt and much of the Arab world, last month's revelation that Pakistan has doubled the size of its nuclear arsenal over the past four years has been largely ignored. Nuclear proliferation analysts from the Federation of American Scientists and the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) assess that since 2006 Pakistan has increased the size of its nuclear arsenal from 30-60 atomic bombs to approximately 110. That makes Pakistan the world's fifth largest nuclear power ahead of Britain and France.

As for delivery systems, according to the Washington Post, Pakistan has developed nuclear-capable land and air-launched cruise missiles. Its Shaheen II missile, with a range of 1,500 miles is about to go into operational deployment.

Wednesday Pakistan test-fired its Hatf-VII new nuclear-capable cruise missile with a 600 kilometer range.

The Obama administration has been silent on Pakistan's nuclear proliferation activities. As ISIS President David Albright said to the Washington Post, "The administration is always trying to keep people from talking about this knowledgeably. They're always trying to downplay the numbers [of Pakistan's nuclear warheads] and insisting that 'it's smaller than you think.'"

Pakistan's nuclear growth goes on as its economy is in shambles, its government is falling apart and a large portion of the country's territory is controlled by the Taliban. Pakistan is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. In 2009 Congress approved a five-year $7.5 billion civilian aid package. Last October the Obama administration proposed supplementing the aid with $2 billion for Pakistan's military.

The administration requested the supplemental aid despite criticism that economic assistance to Pakistan indirectly funds its nuclear project since Pakistan is in an effective state of bankruptcy. Moreover, a US Inspector General report published this week concluded that the $7.5 billion in assistance has achieved little.

For their part, the Pakistani government and military adhere to a radically anti-American line and Pakistan's powerful ISI intelligence service and large sections of its military continue to maintain intimate ties with al Qaida and the Taliban.

Last month Pakistani police arrested US diplomat Raymond Davis in Lahore after he killed two gunmen who were reportedly about to rob him at gunpoint. Pakistani law enforcement officials have charged Davis with murder and refuse to release him to US custody despite the fact that he should enjoy the protection of diplomatic immunity.

Rather than attempt to quiet passions, the Pakistani government is fanning anti-American sentiments by among other things, releasing a videotape of Davis's police interrogation.

To date, while members of Congress are beginning to threaten to curtail aid to Pakistan pending Davis's release, the administration has limited its response to this de facto act of hostage taking by Pakistan to refusing to hold high-level exchanges with Pakistani leaders. And even this limited response has been inconsistently implemented.

For instance, while US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refused to meet with her Pakistani counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi at the Munich security conference last weekend, she did agree to meet with Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the commander of the Pakistani military. So too, the US ambassador in Pakistan met on Monday with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.

Pakistan is a textbook example of a disaster of biblical proportions in the making. Its hyperactive nuclear expansion, weak central government, impoverished, radicalized population, and pro-Islamist military and intelligence arms are sources for major concern. That concern becomes all-out alarm in light of the Taliban/al Qaida's control over anywhere from a quarter to a third of Pakistani territory and the widespread public support for them throughout the country.

Since taking office, the Obama administration has failed to conceive of a strategy for contending with the situation. One of the main obstacles to the formation of a coherent US strategy is the Obama administration's move to outlaw any discussion of the basic threats to US interests. Shortly after entering office, President Barack Obama banned the use of the term "War against terror," substituting it with the opaque term "overseas contingency operation."

Last April Obama banned use of the terms "jihad," "Islamic terrorism," and "radical Islam," in US government documents.

Given that US officials are barred from using all the terms that are relevant for describing reality in places like Pakistan, it is obvious why the US cannot put together a strategy for contending with the challenges it faces there. Imagine an intelligence officer in Peshawar trying to report on what he sees. Imagine a defense attache in Lahore trying to explain the problems with the jihad-infested Pakistani military to his superiors in Washington.

Imagine a USAID officer trying to explain why the jihadist-mosque attending public refuses to work at US-funded highway programs.

The Obama administration's decision to ban relevant language from the official US policy discourse was ideologically motivated. And in choosing ideology over reality, the Obama administration has induced a situation where rather than construct policies to deal with reality, at all levels, US officials have been charged with constructing policies to deny and ignore reality.

Against this backdrop it becomes fairly clear why the Obama administration's handling of the political turmoil in Egypt has been so incompetent. Upon entering office, Obama made a determined effort to ignore the political instability percolating under the surface throughout the authoritarian Arab world. US government officials were instructed to curtail programs aimed at developing liberal alternatives to authoritarianism and the Muslim Brotherhood. The justification for this behavior was again ideological.

As the world's biggest bully, the US had no moral right to judge the behavior of tyrants like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Once the dutifully ignored long repressed popular discontent boiled over into the popular revolts we have seen over the past month in Tunisia and Egypt as well as Yemen, Jordan, Algeria and beyond, the Obama administration rushed to get on the "right side" of the issue. To avoid criticism for refusing to contend with the problems bred by Arab authoritarianism, Obama went to the other extreme. He became the most outspoken champion of unfettered popular democracy in Egypt.

Of course, to occupy this other side of the spectrum, Obama has had to ignore the danger constituted by the most powerful opposition movement in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood's hostility towards the US's most fundamental strategic interests in the Middle East has been swept under the rug by the Obama administration and its supporters in the US media.

But then, in light of the prohibition of all discussion of the reasons the Muslim Brotherhood constitutes a threat to the US - its jihadist ideology of Islamic conquest, its genocidal Islamic-based Jew hatred and hatred of America, its support for Islamic terrorism against non-jihadist regimes throughout the Muslim world and against the West -- it is not surprising that the Obama administration is embracing the inclusion of the movement in a post-Mubarak Egyptian regime.

How could the administration object to something it has chosen to ignore?

The Obama administration's ideologically-driven strategic ineptitude is evident everywhere. From its slavish devotion to appeasing Iran, its single-minded insistence on withdrawing from Iraq, its announced commitment to withdrawing from Afghanistan; to its tolerance of Hugo Chavez, and its infantile reset button diplomacy towards Russia, the Obama administration's foreign policy is on a collision course with reality.

But nowhere is its premeditated incompetence more evident than in its obsession with the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River.

So it was that during his visit in Israel this week, Obama's recently retired national security advisor Gen. James Jones claimed that it is God's will that Israel withdraw to indefensible borders and effectively blamed the political turmoil in Egypt on the absence of a Palestinian state.

As Jones put it, "I'm of the belief that had God appeared in front of President Obama in 2009 and said if he could do one thing on the face of the planet, and one thing only, to make the world a better place and give people more hope and opportunity for the future, I would venture that it would have something to do with finding the two-state solution to the Middle East."

Jones then argued, "Time is not on our side, and a failure to act [in establishing a Palestinian state] may trigger other Egypt-like demonstrations in other countries in the region."

The Obama administration is not alone in this completely irrational view. As the Arab world undergoes massive convulsions born of the legacy of authoritarianism and nourished by the pull of jihadism, all of Europe's major statesmen are lining up behind Washington in pushing Israel to agree to surrender still more land to the PLO in order to establish yet another authoritarian, jihad-infested Arab state.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, British Foreign Minister William Hague, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and other senior officials all parroted Jones's view this week.

Confronting the Obama administration's assault on reason in the interest of ideological faithfulness, Israel is faced with very few good options. The threats Israel faces stem largely from the rising forces of jihad, Islamic terrorism and religiously justified nuclear adventurism embraced by Islamist politicians and religious leaders. That is, the threats facing Israel stem largely from the forces the Obama administration has elected to ignore and deny.

Moreover, the Obama administration's singular obsession with coercing Israel to surrender still more land to the Palestinian Authority means that America's central Middle East policy involves demanding that Israel further strengthen the unmentionable forces of jihad at its own expense. This fact was underlined this week with the Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh's revelation that most senior PA leaders have recently applied for Jordanian citizenship. Clearly the likes of Mahmoud Abbas believe they will not be the winners if their repressive regime in Judea and Samaria is seriously challenged by their popular jihadist rivals in Hamas.

Our leaders are doubtlessly tempted to simply take the path of least resistance and join Obama and his merry band of blind men as they move from lie to lie to defend their ideology from reality. But doing so will not protect us when the dangers sown by the US's strategic dementia provoke the next conflagration.

Israel's best option is to simply tell the truth as loudly and forcefully as it can and base our policies on it. While doing so will win Israel no friends in the Obama administration or in Europe, it will prepare us for the day when the wall of lies they are building from Islamabad to Cairo to Ramallah come crashing down.


JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.
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3)The Collapse of Arab Civilization?
By Michael Fraley

Five years ago, Lt. Col James G. Lacey published the article "The Impending Collapse of Arab Civilization" in The Naval Institute: Proceedings." He disputed the conclusions of two books which have particularly influenced recent foreign policy and grand strategy: The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, by Bernard Lewis, and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington.


In his article, he stated:


A more accurate understanding of events leads to the conclusion that Arab, not Muslim, civilization is in a state of collapse, and it just happens that most Arabs are Muslims. In this regard, the fall of the Western Roman Empire was a collapse of Western Europe and not a crisis of Christianity.


His thesis was that while Islam itself continues to grow and thrive around the world (and indeed, is continuing to make swift inroads into Western states), it has been specifically in the Arab world where one has seen the turmoil of civilization in decay.


He has not been alone. Azmi Bishara wrote in 2003, in Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo):


The Arabs ... are in a double state of decay that boggles the minds even of those who expected a hot summer of post-war decadence ... The [Arab] nation will be split between those who dance to the beat of scandal and defeat, and those who blow themselves up in what is turning into a deafening religious ritual.


Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Fouad Ajami began his article Autocracy and the Decline of the Arabs with this strangely foretelling account:


"It made me feel so jealous," said Abdulmonem Ibrahim, a young Egyptian political activist, of the recent upheaval in Iran. "We are amazed at the organization and speed with which the Iranian movement has been functioning. In Egypt you can count the number of activists on your hand." This degree of "Iran envy" is a telling statement on the stagnation of Arab politics. It is not pretty, Iran's upheaval, but grant the Iranians their due: They have gone out into the streets to contest the writ of the theocrats.


Now, Mubarak has been deposed, but the question we all are asking is this: "In the final analysis, was this indeed victory for the people of Egypt, or a victory for radical Islamists?"


The Collapse of a Civilization?


Recent unrest in the Arab world exposes the discontent among the people that has been building for decades. But is this something larger and more profound than a series of uprisings? Now that the historic seat of Arab culture and power has been upended, does this indicate a renewal or decay of the civilization as a whole? Col. Lacey predicted the upheaval of current days, and made the case for these events being the harbinger for the historical end of the Arab world. This remains a monumental claim, and Lacey recognized the incredulity with which such a claim would be met.


The next question is, how could the world have missed an entire civilization collapsing before its eyes? The simple answer is that no one alive today has ever seen it happen before. Well within living memory we have seen empires collapse and nation-state failure has become a regular occurrence, but no one in the West has witnessed the collapse of a civilization since the Dark Ages. Civilizational collapses take a long time to unfold and are easy to miss in the welter of daily events.


The seeds of such a collapse, if that is what we are seeing take place, might well have been sown 600 years ago, according to Lacey, with the dawning of the Renaissance throughout Western Europe. However, one can make the case that the fate of Arab civilization was set two centuries earlier, with the exile of Ibn Rushd (western name of Averroes).


Different Paths


At a time when western philosophers were actively wrestling with many questions of ontology (what is) and epistemology (how we know), the Arab Caliphs and their chosen scholars handled philosophical disputes as they always had: with charges of infidelity to scripture, and sentences of prison, exile, or death. Ibn Rushd disputed the dominant thinking of Al-Ghazali (1059-1111), and followed more in the tradition of Ibn Sina, an 11th century Persian Islamic philosopher. Yousif Fajr Raslan writes:


Set back by the blind resistance of the Caliph's scholars, Ibn Rushd turned to Greek philosophy where he found his ideal in Aristotle...He applied rational reasoning to theology, an approach that further stirred his colleagues against him and against philosophy as a whole, not to mention their particular hatred of Greek philosophers.


Ibn Rushd was banished, putting an effective end to any hope of philosophical renewal and introduction of historically based rationality into the Arab culture.


Western philosophy traversed the Renaissance and periods of Empiricism and developed the "Scientific Method." Western thinkers, from Thomas Aquinas on, wrestled with the relationship between the metaphysical and the physical, along with issues of authority and the search for truth. Both Christian and secular Enlightenment scholars introduced ideas of "natural law," property rights, and the "social contract."


Arab scholarship, in contrast, went on to hold up Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), born in what is modern Tunisia, as one of their greatest political thinkers. His definition of government as "an institution which prevents injustice other than such as it commits itself" still dominates Arab political thought [emphasis added].


Policy Choices


If Lacey was right, and we are truly witnessing the collapse of Arab civilization as a whole, this does not bode well for the western world. The powers able and ready to fill the void are neither friendly toward, nor passive in their attitude toward, the Western states. What happens in Egypt might well presage what happens in the rest of the Arab world. The key question is this: Has western thought been sufficiently infused within Egypt's people so as to lead to legitimate and lasting democracy? If not, then we will likely see a repeat of 1970s Iran; not only in Egypt, but throughout the entire Arab world


Col. Lacey made the case for dealing with a declining Arab civilization through means very similar to the Cold War: specifically, containment. We have largely followed this grand strategy until recently. Sadly, with our administration's bumbling and weak response to the events in Egypt, we might well have lost our most vital ally in the region, and hence, our ability to reverse a tidal wave of radical Islamic power.


Our only options now are to strengthen relationships with friendly powers in the region, give aid to those who seek freedom and democracy, and prop up the truly free states. It becomes even more imperative that we ensure the continued growth and success of Iraq; more critical still that we contain Iran and minimize their meddling within the affairs of Arab nations.


Nothing about this is easy. A proper understanding of the true nature of turmoil in the Arab states should have led to more proactive measures. It must lead to more clarity in our future strategy in the region. Otherwise, we might well see, within our lifetime, the rise of radical Islam and the crumbling of Arab civilization.
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4)B.H. Obama: Shameless Imperialist
By James Lewis

We’ve just watched Obama commit an act of imperialistic aggression against a peaceful sovereign state. Mubarak’s Egypt threatened no one. It was the great pillar of stability in the Middle East for thirty years. Its government was far more civilized than Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and fifty other corrupt and tyrannical members of the United Nations.

Obama’s whole spiel to the Left has been that he is an anti-colonial socialist; that’s why he wrote Dreams from My Father. Obama Sr. was a big anti-colonialist. Obama has claimed (at various times) to be the new Nelson Mandela, as well as the new Abe Lincoln, and most recently, the new Ronald Reagan.

But Reagan worked to liberate the oppressed peoples of Eastern Europe from Soviet tyranny. Barack Obama has now pushed, and pushed, and pushed to overthrow the government of a sovereign Muslim nation, the only Arab power to ever sign a peace treaty with Israel.

According to the lickspittles of the New York Times, this must be a great victory for democracy. They have failed to explain why that must be; instead, they’ve been chasing headlines, along with the other idiot media. But there hasn’t even been an election in Egypt. Obama didn’t demand an election, and when Mubarak promised free and fair elections he was contemptuously turned down -- not by the people of Egypt, but by Washington, D.C.

The Tahrir Square mob was coordinated by a 30 year old Arabic-speaking Google executive. The Mu-Bros will now get a big vote -- like Hitler and the Turkish Muslim Brothers -- because Egyptians have been taught to believe all of the Mu-Bros fondest fascist beliefs. Egypt’s Muslim Brothers have already called for war with Israel.

Egypt is now a carbon copy of the way in Turkey, Gaza and Iran were taken over by the Muslim totalitarians. Turkey had excellent relations with Israel and Europe before the Brotherhood took over. Today it is an Islamofascist ally of Iran against the civilized world.


When Communists like Lenin committed aggression they re-defined the word “imperialism.” According to Lenin, Marxist tyrannies could never be imperialistic, no matter how many Ukrainians, Czechs, and Poles they murdered. That is why the Soviet Empire was never allowed to be called what it was: An Empire. Its abject colonial subjects in Eastern Europe are still afraid today of another Russian imperial assault.

Communists can’t be imperialistic, no matter how much they act like Nazi Germany. That is how the Communists conquered China, Cambodia, South Vietnam, and all the rest with no criticism in the West. You see, Communist imperialism was good imperialism.

Enter Obama. What Obama just did was encourage a twittered revolt against Mubarak, and then publicly, brutally, in the most humiliating way, order him to resign. Joe Stalin would have been proud. So would Mao Zedong. This is what the Soviets tried to do all around the world.

Obama has now turned the United States into a Leftist Imperialist power.

What’s his purpose? It can only be one. Obama believes the nonsense that all the problems of the Middle East would be solved if only Israel compromises enough with its deadliest enemies. Obama does not care about the fascist regime in Iran. When peaceful protesters were thronging the streets of Tehran last year he did nothing. It’s not a popular government that he cares about.

Rather, Obama and the radical Left are forging another Communist-Fascist alliance, exactly like the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1938, which split up Poland and started World War Two. The new Red-Black alliance links the Radical Left with the Muslim radicals who attacked us on 9/11.

While the media are covering up this reality, we can see it all over the place: In the Ground Zero mosque, in the insane Congressional testimony by our DNI Clapper, that the Mu-Bros are “secular,” and in any number of other media-supported lies that serve only Muslim fascists and hard Leftists around the world.

In politics the question is always “Cui Bono?” -- Whom does it serve? And when you look at Obama’s brutal imperialistic push to get rid of Mubarak over the last several weeks, you know exactly whom it serves.

It serves radical Islam, because the Muslim Brothers now have a clear path to power in Egypt. They already control Turkey, Gaza, and soon, the West Bank of the Jordan River. Jordan has played a moderating role in the Middle East for generations; it is now threatened by a radical Muslim revolt.

This is Obama’s route to imperial power. It is consistent with all his actions in the last two years, and particularly with today’s public humiliation of the strongest Arab power in the world.

Obama’s ego is Napoleonic. He needs to expand his power without limits. That’s the nature of malignant narcissism.

Civilized and democratic peoples suffer when Napoleonic characters take power. We can’t see the end game yet. This might or might not end in a major war or worse. But we have a riverboat gambler running the ship of state, and he loves to play with the power of “audacity.”

That was Napoleon’s motto: “L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’laudace.” Which worked fine for Napoleon’s field marshals, but not so well for all the defeated peoples of Europe and the Middle East. And in the end, Napoleon’s audacity died in the snows of the Russian winter.

With the radical Obama administration, the United States has now embarked on a perilous course. Instead of keeping the dominoes from toppling, Obama is malignantly pushing them into the arms of Islamic radicals. That kind of gamble has never before worked to the betterment of humanity.

On the contrary: It has always led to disaster before.


Whether Obama the magic trickster can now pull it off in the nuclearizing Middle East is very doubtful, and therefore very dangerous.
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6)Anoush Ehteshami and Democracy in Egypt
By Daniel Pipes

Anoush Ehteshami ought not to have taken on the assignment of arguing "that Egypt will become a democracy within a year" because, in fact, he shares my skepticism about full political participation emerging there in so brief a time. His misgivings and circumspections number five:

To begin with, he makes the case for the continued power of the regime and its institutions, noting that "the state machinery remains penetrated by party members and Mubarak loyalists" while "the wider security establishment is thoroughly controlled by the Mubarak-created ruling elite." From this, he concludes that "the imminent end of this regime and this president may have been exaggerated." Obviously, this supports my argument.

Second, Mr Ehteshami foresees nothing more hopeful in Egypt's future than "what could be loosely referred to as a rocky road to democratization." This vague term, he goes on to explain, means (1) a widening of the political base, (2) the broadening of public space, and (3) reformist forces penetrating the regime. I do not understand what this all amounts to – but it does not fit the conventional description of democracy.

Third, he predicts the emergence of a broad coalition – and then its prompt failure, leading to a consolidation of parties into ones representing Islamist, nationalist, liberal, pan-Arab, and secular outlooks. Their competition, he admits, "will be long and painful" – adjectives that indicate the process will neither be finished within twelve months nor be democratic.

Fourth, and most eccentrically, Mr Ehteshami holds that economic forces will prod the country toward democracy: "Economic imperative will generate its own pressures against the government and the momentum for broad economic reforms and transparency will provide more energy for pro-reform forces." Tell that to the Chinese with their three decades of autocratic government and accompanying economic boom.

Out of this mishmash of predictions comes the less-than-ringing conclusion that in a year's time, "Egypt will be becoming a democracy." Well, "becoming a democracy" is not the motion: to remind, our topic is whether "Egypt will become a democracy." Mr Ehteshami seems unable to get himself actually to make that prediction.

In short, we both agree that after a "long and painful" year, Egypt will, at best, find itself "becoming a democracy." I thank him for helping me make the case that Egypt will remain autocratic in twelve months' time.

Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He has lived for three years in Egypt.
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7)Why Business Isn't Getting 'In The Game'
By STEPHEN H. HABER AND F. SCOTT KIEFF


President Obama stood in front of the Chamber of Commerce last week and told American businesses to "get in the game" by investing their massive cash reserves to stimulate jobs, demand and overall economic growth.

Whether the president's call for the private sector to invest more aggressively is successful depends on the theory one has about why businesses have stayed on the sidelines to this point, not investing their mountains of cash.

The theory implicit in the president's speech is that the business community has simply not been paying close enough attention, that it has overlooked promising investment opportunities.

But another theory is that the business community has been paying very close attention — most particularly to the president himself — and what it sees is cause for concern.

Under this theory, businesses may not see the president as having made a gentle suggestion that they reconsider investment opportunities that are attractive on their own terms. Instead, they may fear he's made a demand that they deploy their capital or face consequences.

The president is right to compare big markets with big games. But the game to envision is not football but poker. Successful firms are sophisticated players. They don't show up to the table without a large stake. The mountains of cash companies are hoarding provide plenty of bank for that purpose.

Misspent Stimulus

But they also don't ante up if they think that any moment in the middle of the hand the dealer is likely to announce that the wild cards are deuces, kings and one-eye jacks, until he decides they are not.

We think the administration might want to consider the hypothesis that the particular context of its own interactions with business may support the alternative theory about why the president's recent remarks may not help. The extraordinary degree and nature of the particular changes to the basic rules of the game that this administration already has overseen may be big reasons why cash is hoarded.

Since President Obama has taken office, the business community has seen a $787 billion stimulus package that was poorly designed and largely misspent, a massive increase in the federal government deficit and a total overhaul of the health care system, which is a big component of every employment relationship.

It also watched the president deploy his bully pulpit to hurl epithets like "fat cats" when referring to finance professionals. It saw him stand with his entire economic team on national television to call out one group of secured creditors in an effort to shame them into surrendering their property rights during the Chrysler bankruptcy.

Sweet Talk

Most recently, it watched as the Dodd-Frank Act brought more sweeping changes to the structure of American financial regulation than the combination of every other action since the New Deal.

This history sheds light on why the business community was largely silent in response to the president's recent article in the Wall Street Journal, in which he discussed a recent Executive Order requiring a governmentwide review of federal regulations so as to eliminate rules that stymie economic growth.

A lesson can be drawn from the example he gave: "If the FDA deems saccharin safe enough for coffee, then the EPA should not treat it as hazardous waste." Against the present background, some in the market may see this as an attempt to use artificial sweeteners to cover a very bitter taste.

Some just may not believe Obama's new business overtures, seeing them as too saccharine to whet the appetite of a serious market participant. Some may perceive them as well-meaning, but fear that they signal yet so many more big changes to the rules of the game that prudence requires patience before any serious investments can be designed, let alone implemented.

If the alternative theory is right, then against the president's history of populist business-bashing and successive changes to the basic rules of the game may combine to make his repeated incantation in the recent State of the Union Address that "We do big things" an unfortunate reason that business may continue to only make penny antes.

• Haber is a professor at Stanford University's School of Humanities and Sciences, Kieff teaches at George Washington University's School of Law and both are senior fellows at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
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