From '60's Hippie to Conservative - Iran Has Upper Hand!

Another irreverent joke:

"Paddy had been drinking at his local Dublin pub all day and most of the
night celebrating St Patrick's Day. Mick, the bartender says, 'You'll
not be drinking anymore tonight, Paddy'. Paddy replies, 'OK Mick, I'll
be on my way then'. Paddy spins around on his stool and steps off.. He
falls flat on his face. 'Shoite' he says and pulls himself up by the
stool and dusts himself off. He takes a step towards the door and falls
flat on his face,

'Shoite',

Shoite!'

He looks to the doorway and thinks to himself that if he can just get to
the door and some fresh air he'll be fine. He belly crawls to the door
and shimmies up to the door frame. He sticks his head outside and takes
a deep breath of fresh air, feels much better and takes a step out onto
the sidewalk and falls flat on his face.

'Bi'Jesus.... I'm fockin' focked,' he says.

He can see his house just a few doors down, and crawls to the door,
hauls himself up the door frame, opens the door and shimmies inside.. He
takes a look up the stairs and says 'No fockin' way'. He crawls up the
stairs to his bedroom door and says 'I can make it to the bed'. He takes
a step into the room and falls flat on his face. He says 'Fock it' and
falls into bed.

The next morning, his wife, Jess, comes into the room carrying a cup of
coffee and says, 'Get up Paddy. Did you have a bit to drink last night ?'

Paddy says, 'I did, Jess. I was fockin' pissed. But how'd you know?'

'Mick phoned . . . you left your wheelchair at the pub.'

---

Iran continues to have the upper hand and Obama continues to demonstrate he is eventually going to fold his.  Perhaps this is what Obama was signaling to Putin when he spoke and the mike was open.  (See 1 and 1a below.)

Iran transfers U.S. drone information and intelligence to Russia? (See 1b below.)

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If members of the fourth estate were doing their job there would be a hue and cry of disgust over the way Obama has been AWOL and when present  conducting the affairs of state. 

Yes, his approval rating is dropping when, in fact, it should be plummeting. (See 2 below.)

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A recap of our foreign policy under Obama by a veteran! (See 3 below.)

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David Horowitz, the once famous hippie and 60's left wing radical, saw the light and became a conservative. He now offers insights into how Republicans can win.  (See 4 below.)

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Dick

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1)US withdrawal from Europe-based missile shield will impact Israel’s defense

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Sunday, Feb. 10 echoed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s rejection of direct talks with the US four days ago which he said were on the grounds that they “would solve nothing” because, "You are holding a gun against Iran.”

Ahmadinejad added is own rider to this dismissal: “God willing, soon Iran’s satellite will be located in orbit at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, next to others from four or five advanced powers and it will relay a message of peace and fidelity to the world,” he said.

The boast that Iran would soon be the world’s sixth space power came two weeks after Tehran claimed to have put a monkey in orbit around earth, although it did not report bringing back to earth either the space capsule or the monkey.

Indeed, US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, pouring a healthy dose of skepticism on the very existence of the project, commented: “The Iranians said they sent a monkey, but the monkey they showed later seemed to have different facial features.”

Tehran is again caught wandering at ease through its favorite terrain between fact, hyperbole and fiction about its achievements, whether in space or its nuclear program.

In recent weeks, reelected Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stressed he wants a broad government coalition for the critical objective of preventing Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.

The question is how does he propose to achieve this when tough US and European sanctions have not just failed to stop Iran in its tracks but accelerated its nuclear progress. Iran is now estimated to be within four months of a nuclear bomb capacity from the moment a decision is taken to build one.

Those months are critical: On February 25 the five UN Security Council’s permanent members plus Germany sit down with Iran in Kazakhstan for a fresh round of negotiations. Former rounds in this format led nowhere and no breakthrough is expected this time either beyond, at best, a date for a continuation.

On March 20, President Barack Obama arrives in Israel for the first foreign trip of his second term. The purpose of his visit is plain, except to Netanyahu’s domestic rivals: Facing a 50 percent cutback in military spending, the Obama administration cannot credibly threaten to go to war against a recalcitrant Iran. But the US president may still wave the Israeli military option in Tehran’s face.

Not that the ayatollahs are likely to be impressed. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad have both dismissed talks with Washington "with a gun" at their head, meaning that they are not scared of the Israeli gun the Americans are putting to their heads.

In fact, the Islamic rulers of Tehran are reported by intelligence and Iranian sources to be fully confident that they are home and dry as a nuclear power after a secret US Pentagon research study was leaked that “casts doubt on whether the multibillion-dollar missile defense system planned for Europe” (originally by the Bush administration) “can ever protect the US from Iranian missiles as intended.”

Clearly the missile shield against Iran, which aroused ire in Moscow, looks like falling under the defense budget axe.

The missile shield in Europe was also designed to defend Israel and Turkey against Iranian ballistic missile attack. Leaving it unfinished because of “flaws” exposes both those countries to such attack.

President Obama will not doubt tell Netanyahu that the system for intercepting medium-range Iranian missiles is to be scrapped. However, he will have to take into account that if the Iranians do finally manage to put a capsule in orbit at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, they will be able to fire a ballistic missile at any point on earth as well, including the United States. Even if they did fail to put a primate in space, they will keep on trying and advancing until they get there.


1a)

The Real Meaning of the Obama Visit to Israel and U.S.-Israel Relations in Obama's Second Term

Barry Rubin, Rubin Reports - Israpundit,  February 10th, 2013

The international media is speculating on Obama’s visit scheduled for late March. The argument is that he would not come unless he gets some breakthrough, that is, some Israeli concession, and he wouldn’t leave happy unless he received one.

So what would this concession be? The most likely candidate would be a freeze on constructing building within existing settlements, as Israel gave him three years ago. At that time, despite a ten-month freeze, the Palestinian Authority only came to talks at the last minute, offered nothing, and then quickly demanded another freeze. In other words, Israel did precisely what Obama asked and got nothing in return, either from his government or the Palestinians.

Actually, it is not technically true to say “nothing.” Secretly, the U.S. government promised to accept that Israel could annex “settlement blocs,” (a promise originally made by Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush) that is keep the largest existing settlements near the border, in exchange for territorial swaps in a peace agreement, and to continue building in east Jerusalem.

What happened? A few months later, a visiting Vice President Joe Biden threw a tantrum about an announced zoning board decision that at some future point Israel might build in pre-1967 Jordanian-ruled territory. In effect, that was a violation of the agreement.

Then, while not explicitly going back on the settlement bloc agreement without notifying Israel, Obama made a major speech in which he put the emphasis on Israel’s return to the pre-1967 borders (that is, giving up the settlement blocs), though he did leave the door ajar for territorial swaps. That was not breaking the pledge but certainly undermined it.

After doing what Obama wanted and then getting little or nothing in exchange, Israel is now faced with claims that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu never made any concessions to get negotiations going. After going along with Obama, it is now said in the United States that he tried to undermine Obama or didn’t cooperate.

And after the Palestinian Authority repeatedly killed negotiations—even after Obama announced in 2010 that they would begin shortly at Camp David and Netanyahu agreed—it is a mainstay of mass media coverage that Netanyahu is responsible for the failure of negotiations to happen.

A friend joked that Netanyahu should change his first name from Benjamin to “Hard-line” since that’s the way he’s usually presented in the Western mass media.

Thus, Israeli cynicism should be—if people knew the factors behind it—understandable. After all, the sum total of international wisdom on the now-dead (but pretended to be alive) “peace process” is that this means Israel giving up things and getting nothing in return.

Yet Israel is prepared to go along with Obama again in some fashion. Why? Because it is necessary to preserve the strong relationship with the United States. Obama will be president for the next four years and some help from him is needed on the Iran nuclear issue, the likely growing threat from Egypt, military aid, and other issues.

That is political reality.

At the same time, though, the idea—again, prevalent in mass media coverage—that Netanyahu must “moderate” to form a government is not true. First, a very important lesson: Ignore everything said by Israeli politicians and media during the coalition-forming period because it is invariably misleading. This is what experience has shown virtually without exception.

Now, Netanyahu’s basic choice is to bring together at least two of the following three parties: The traditional liberal Yesh Atid led by Yair Lapid; the Sephardic religious Shas, and the right-wing Ha-Bayit Ha-Yehudi, led by Naftali Bennett. This is like the story of how you get the fox, the chicken, and the grain across a river without something getting eaten. It is very difficult.

Yesh Atid, led by Yair Lapid, has called for Netanyahu to work hard to get talks with the Palestinians going again. This has been treated as some major move of pressure. Of course not. That’s what Lapid is going to say and should say. And Netanyahu should also say—as he has done hundreds of times in the last four years—that he wants to get negotiations going.

That does not deal, however, with how many unilateral concessions Israel is willing to give to do so and whether the Palestinian Authority—now believing it is victorious from having the U.N. recognize it as a state—would go along. Everyone knows this. So to say that Israel should try to get negotiations going again is equivalent to someone in America saying that it is important to improve the economy.

Yet the reality of coalition negotiations is this: Lapid doesn’t like Bennett and vice-versa; Lapid and Bennett don’t like Shas; Netanyahu doesn’t like Bennett and knows that adding him would create international costs. And by the way, would Bennett enter a government that started out by announcing a long freeze in construction?

So it isn’t as easy as mainstream conventional wisdom makes it seem.

It is also suggested the P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas might actually give up something to get negotiations going. Like what? Perhaps giving up law suits against Israel—which is now supposedly occupying the territory of an internationally recognized Palestinian state, allegedly achieved without any agreement with Israel—in the international court.

Well, maybe. But Abbas faces massive political pressure in his society that far exceeds anything Netanyahu faces. What will he get for giving up what he has claimed as a trump card, a great victory? He certainly doesn’t fear pressure from Obama. Unlike Israel, the Palestinians can do anything they want and not face costs or even public criticism from the American president.

In other words, the whole thing isn’t going to work. Obama might come away with just enough to claim some success, a claim that will be echoed in the mass media. But it would be meaningless.

From Israel’s standpoint, however, letting Obama take the bows as a great peacemaker is worthwhile as long as it doesn’t cost too much or involve too much risk. Ironically, because of Obama’s policies and the rising boldness of its enemies and a revolutionary Islamism that feels itself triumphant, Israel is going to need U.S. support a bit more in the coming four years.

1b)IRAN GIVES STEALTH DRONE SECRETS TO RUSSIA

Regime releases aerial video decoded from captured U.S. craft

By REZA KAHLILI

Russia has helped decode an American stealth drone that was captured by Iran 14 months ago in exchange for its secrets, a source has told WND.

Last week, Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards air and space division, announced the decoding of the drone, while Islamic regime media aired aerial footage below from the drone showing some of its operational capabilities.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/iran-gives-stealth-drone-secrets-to-russia/#q5hDptiRehv1OMSO.99 

“Some (Guards officers) believed that America would send its commando unit to destroy (the drone) while others were of the opinion that the U.S. would not risk having its forces get caught by us, creating a bigger problem for themselves, and that they might just do an air raid to destroy it,” Hajizadeh said. “We gave it a 10 to 15 percent chance on the air raid, and because of that we ordered an alert at all our missile bases to be ready to launch against all U.S. bases (in the region) if they did take any action.”

When the drone was captured, President Obama said, “We’ve asked for it back. We’ll see how the Iranians respond.”

According to Hamidreza Zakeri, a former intelligence officer of the regime who has defected to Europe, Iran and Russia had long been working on trapping a U.S. drone.

A Russian military team from its air and space division had secretly entered Iran days after a strategic agreement between the two countries in 2007 and was stationed at Revolutionary Guard bases to help the Guards with its weapons program and access to modern U.S. technology.

Get the inside story in Reza Kahlili’s “A Time To Betray” and learn how the Islamic regime “bought the bomb” in “Atomic Iran.”

After studying the stealth drone’s travel routes and its surveillance of Iran’s skies, the Russians successfully hacked into the system of one of the RQ170s and forced it to land in Iran Dec. 4, 2011.

With this collaboration, all the information of the stealth drone is now in the hands of the Russians, and much has been given to Iran’s Defense Ministry. Russia in turn provided Iran with the information on its anti-air defense system S300. Russia, because of international sanctions against Iran, could not deliver the actual S300 system.

Other information passed to Iran included technology on the American fighters F35 and X36, which eventually resulted in the Defense Ministry publicly unveiling its new jet fighter, the Qaher 313, with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasting of the advanced features of this super stealth fighter.

However, according to the source, the fighter shown by Iranian media was merely a shell model and not operational and that the regime has only tested the smaller size. The project originally was scheduled to be completed in 2016, but due to the sanctions and economic problems, the regime has had problems following through with the timetable.

Russian-Iranian collaboration goes back many years. After the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and the formation of the new republics, oil reserves in the Caspian Sea became an issue among the neighboring countries, resulting in disputes with Iran, which claimed half of the reserves.

Russia worried about the impact of the increased importance of this new market and the possible decrease in value of its Siberian oil fields, where over 40 percent of its income is based on its export of gas and oil. Vladimir Putin made a special trip to Iran in 2007 over the issue.

Because the Caspian-Caucasus region could play a significant role in the world economy and world policy, Putin in his meeting with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was able to significantly expand Russia’s collaboration with the Islamic regime. He also got an agreement on the division of Caspian oil reserves and a bigger Russian role in transporting the oil out of that area.

The 10-year agreement called for the expansion of commerce between the two countries of up to $200 billion and military and secret projects totaling $350 billion.

It was the first time a Kremlin chief visited Iran since Josef Stalin’s trip in 1943.

Russian collaboration extends to the regime’s missile, nuclear and even bio-weapons programs. Sources in the Islamic regime previously have revealed exclusively to WND the existence of secret bio-weapons site in Iran, where, with the help of Russia, Iran has mastered production of eight microbial agents, arming its missiles with biological warheads, and a nuclear site at which, with Russian help, laser technology is enriching uranium

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2)Congressional Hearings Show Obama Treading Dangerous Global Path

• 
 
• Michael Barone 

There were two extraordinary disclosures in Thursday's testimony of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

One is that there was no communication between them and Barack Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the seven hours of Sept. 11, 2012, when Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were attacked and murdered in Benghazi.

This is a vivid contrast with those photos we've seen of the president and his leading advisers watching the video of the attack on Osama bin Laden.

At a 5 p.m. meeting, when it was first known that Stevens was under attack, Obama did issue Panetta and Dempsey a directive to do whatever they could to protect him. And then left the matter, in Panetta's words, "up to us."

After the meeting, according to White House records, Obama did have a one-hour phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a phone call The Weekly Standard editor William Kristol has called "non-urgent, politically useful."

But he apparently wasn't curious about what was happening in Benghazi. He wasn't too concerned either the next morning, when after the first murder of a U.S. ambassador in 33 years he jetted off on a four-hour ride to a campaign event in Las Vegas. I don't think you have to be a Republican partisan to consider that unseemly.

Obama's odd response to the Benghazi attack and the efforts, surely choreographed by his White House, to attribute it to a spontaneous response to an anti-Muslim video suggest that his first priority was winning re-election -- and that Benghazi was an irritant that must not be allowed to stand in the way.

The other disclosure in the testimony of Panetta and Dempsey was that they, Secretary Clinton and CIA Director David Petraeus all backed aid to the Syrian rebels and that the president decided against it.

Of course, that was his decision to make under the Constitution. And there are reasonable arguments against involvement. We could end up aiding the wrong rebels. We could get sucked into a quagmire.

We have seen in chaotic Libya and in the fighting in neighboring Mali and the hostage-taking in Algeria negative developments that have flowed from our "leading from behind" support of those seeking to overthrow Moammar Gadhafi.

But there are also arguments for aiding the Syrian rebels if, as Obama stated months ago, you want to see the regime of Bashir Assad ousted from power in a country far more strategically located than Libya. And if you want to reduce the bloodshed going on now for more than a year.

Evidently those arguments weren't persuasive to Obama. On Syria, he chose to lead from very far behind.

"This now looks increasingly like a historic mistake," writes Walter Russell Mead in his invaluable American Interest blog, and not just because it helps the rebels aligned with Islamist terrorist groups.

"Iran seems much less worried about what this administration might do to it," Mead writes. "The mullahs seem to believe that faced with a tough decision, the White House blinked." And, he adds, "both the Israelis and the Sunni Arab states have smelled the same weakness."

The two disclosures last Thursday came at a time when other presidential actions sent a similar message. One was the withdrawal of one of the two aircraft carriers scheduled to patrol the Persian Gulf.

The other was the nomination to be secretary of defense of former Sen. Chuck Hagel, a longtime opponent of not only military action but also economic sanctions against Iran.

The Hagel nomination was baffling. Most incoming secretaries of defense in the last 40 years have had extensive experience in the Pentagon, at the White House or on the congressional armed services committees.

Hagel has none of these. And, as he admitted at the end of a confirmation hearing, when he misstated administration policy, "There are a lot of things I don't know about."

"A decade of war is ending," Barack Obama declared in his second inaugural. His response to Benghazi, his decision on Syria and his nomination of Hagel suggest he thinks he can draw down our forces and avoid military conflict.

But weakness is provocative and retreat invites attack. Threats abound -- Iran, North Korea, China versus Japan. Obama's moves may end up making war more likely, not less.

Michael Barone, senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner (www.washingtonexaminer.com), is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. To find out more about Michael Barone, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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3)The Vector of American Foreign Policy
By G. Murphy Donovan
If you were wondering about the vector of American foreign and military policy in the next four years, you could do worse than examine the new national security team: John Brennan, John Kerry, Charles Hagel, and Martin Dempsey.

John Brennan

Brennan is first among equals as a White House intimate, a staffer who has had the president's ear for four years. He is also the sponsor of a foreign policy where Islamism is the central, yet invisible, nexus of near and distant national security threats.   "Invisible" because Mr. Brennan has made his mark as an articulate apologist for, and co- architect of, a policy of stealth appeasement.  

The pillars of the Brennan doctrine are threefold: high visibility engagement with Islam, low visibility isolation of Israel, and clandestine kinetic containment of "radicals." Wars of the future war under a Brennan doctrine will be confined to joystick combat, military gamers in Nevada using drones for selective global retribution.

Withal, any solo holy warrior, or Muslim organization, that kills in the name of Allah or jihad, or sympathizes with terror tactics, will still be characterized as an unrepresentative minority.  Thus, a larger Muslim culture, especially the Arab vanguard, enjoys a kind of blanket absolution and no incentives to reform.  With Brennan, obliviousness is the burka that obscures the obvious.

Such minimization allows the ideological threat to be contained; theoretically confined to the likes of al Qaeda. Never mind that Pew surveys of Muslim attitudes in general, Arab opinion in particular, consistently register toxic levels of hostility towards the West; anti- Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-American sentiments are rampant.

With the Brennan doctrine, statistical evidence, numbers of Islamist adherents and numbers of western casualties do not matter. The lynchpin of 21^st century moral pandering is a phenomenon that Theodore Dalrymple calls "incontinent forgiveness" and Rebecca Bynum clarifies as "tolerance raised above justice and forgiveness (raised) above mercy." With the Brennan doctrine, the body bags of US Marines from Lebanon, New York's Twin Towers, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lockerbie, Beslan, the USS Cole, or Benghazi are negligible investments in soft power, a strategy downsized to accommodate elusive goals like nation-building (nee development), transition, and stability -- objectives with no clear measures of effectiveness.  Defeating theo-fascism is not part of the Brennan plan.

In his new role as CIA director, John Brennan is now the official curator of the Islamist foreign policy trope. If the Brennan doctrine does not tilt or pander to Mecca, then someone needs to explain why President Obama has yet to genuflect in Jerusalem.

John Kerry

Senator Kerry of Massachusetts might be the perfect choice to fill Hillary Clinton's pants suit as chief American "cookie pusher."

Mrs. Clinton was the most mobile, most visible, most popular, and least effective member of the president's national security team. If frequent flyer miles are a measure of merit, then Mrs. Clinton is an over-achiever. Unfortunately, per diem and apology tourism might signify celebrity, but not social progress.

Like Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice before her, Hilary was in the catbird's seat to confront global chauvinism and misogynistic obscenities in the Muslim world, yet she did little save pontificate, provide eloquent lip service to women's and human rights. Like Brennan, Mrs. Clinton seems to be pogonophobic.

As Hillary took her victory lap before congressional committees, she provided a fitting coda for Obama Cabinet beliefs about hate crime, cultural terror, and the global jihad to date. "What difference, at this point, does it make?" says Mrs. Clinton. To be fair, we should note that Hilary Clinton, like her husband, is an apt representative of her generation -- an era where celebrity trumps achievement.

Now comes John Kerry another reliable sailor from the US Senate, America's axis of political inertia. The Senate has not passed a budget in recent memory, yet deficit spending proceeds apace midst the worst economic threat since the Great Depression.  Alas, Kerry is not known for his economic acumen; his marriage into a processed food fortune notwithstanding.

Senator Kerry is a 30 year veteran of the foreign policy wars of the apologetic Left. Like Ted Kennedy, Kerry made his bones as an anti-war activist, scion of the Jane Fonda wing of the Democratic Party. And like Mrs. Clinton, Kerry is likely to be a loyal and reliable face for the Brennan doctrine, a mix where timidity in the West will continue to stimulate the worst in the East.

John Kerry's rehabilitation by near unanimous bi-partisan consent is a foreign policy marker too, a signal that there are little or no significant differences between the American Left and American Right on the Brennan doctrine.

Charles Hagel

If Kerry is a poke in the eye, then Charles Hagel is an inside joke -- or a deer caught in the national spotlight. The only choice for Secretary of Defense that might be worse would have been John Kerry. Hagel's confirmation hearing was astounding. In a few short hours he managed to backtrack on every controversial position he took as a senator.  Hagel has redefined himself as a political eunuch.

As a self-described ideological castrato, Mister Hagel might be a cynical, yet logical, choice for a Defense Department that is about to undergo a surgery that cuts more than giblets. Hagel will be painted as a bi-partisan player, but his Republican record is one of political opportunism underpinned by closet anti-Semitism. Hagel was probably selected because he is malleable, reliable, and an ecumenical compliment to Brennan another loyal subscriber to the defend Iran and "blame Israel" idioms.

Martin Dempsey

There was a time when flag officers might be excluded from any analysis of policy futures. Military officers were expected to stay out of politics. Alas, that ship sailed with Admiral Mike Mullen, the last chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Mullen, you might recall, led the charge for gay rights, a political hot potato if ever there were one.  Under Mullen, sexual preferences, or gender orientation, became a military readiness issue.

And political correctness was not limited to rear echelon warriors. During the same period, then ISAF commander, David Petraeus, had female soldiers wearing hijabs rather than helmets in the field.

Taking a cue from Mullen, the new JCS Chairman, Martin Dempsey, jumped into the social swamp before Leon Panetta departed. Dempsey, in the name of equality, has opened the combat arms to women. Dempsey claims that "sexual assaults will decline" (sic) in the US military with women at the front. 

When Dempsey was asked why he did not act to save the Benghazi four, he replied that he was aware of the crisis in real-time, but did not receive a request for help from Mrs. Clinton. While Brennan and Clinton might be afraid of beards, Dempsey's cavalry seems to be saddled with a "Mother may I?" complex.

JCS crisis timidity does not inhibit enthusiasm for social engineering -- risky experiments unencumbered by experience or evidence. Never mind that candidate women have already failed to meet infantry training standards in the Marine Corps.   Statutory equality among first responders, police and firemen, has led to significant alteration of training and qualification standards. Marksmanship was the first casualty.

If the Joint Chiefs were serious about equality, they would be lobbying to have women included in selective service registration. Calls for equal rights without equal obligations are a fraud.

Flag officers now routinely roll over for politicians at home, and such generals are sure to be pushovers for hirsute fanatics abroad, zealots who care little for women's rights and even less for alternative life styles.  And herein lays the real tragedy when misguided notions of equality subvert common sense. When gay State Department employees and Defense Department women are deployed to Ummah battlefronts, they are exposed to double jeopardy, military and cultural risk. Feminism and homosexuality are capital offenses among Islamists -- and sharia justice in these matters is often instantaneous.

The Obama cabinet and the JCS seems to have learned nothing from the executions and mutilations at Benghazi.  American Cabinet officers and generals have raised special gender pleading at home above the proven hazards in all those Muslims wars. 

Dark Horizons

There is no evidence that the Brennan doctrine supports prudent near or long term strategy. Backwash from Benghazi illustrates the impasse. The knee-jerk Cabinet response is defensive; throw more money at outpost "security."  Indeed, a billion dollars will be taken from Defense Department accounts and thrown into the bottomless pit of Foggy Bottom consular vulnerabilities. Alas, passive "engagement" is again raised above justifiable, if not necessary, confrontation.

The moral cowardice embedded in the Brennan doctrine is underwritten by defensive fear, naiveté, and misplaced assertions of moral equivalence. We fear that things could get worse; fears about oil, debt, and terror. We also pray that our tolerance will overcome their dogma; forgetting, unfortunately, that most Muslims are tolerant only where they are a minority. And we continue to be seduced by the shibboleth that Islam is one of the "world's great religions" and not just another mutating variant of political fascism.

G. Murphy Donovan is a Vietnam veteran and former USAF Intelligence officer.

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4)David Horowitz: How Republicans can win

After voters re-elected an administration that added five trillion dollars to the nation’s debt, left 23 million Americans unemployed, surrendered Iraq to America’s enemy Iran, and enabled the Muslim Brotherhood to gain control of the largest country in the Middle East, the one lesson Republicans should agree on is that elections are driven by emotions, not reason. Moreover, when it comes to mobilizing emotions, Democrats beat Republicans hands down.

Worse, Republicans appear unable to learn from their losses. Year after year, Democrats accuse Republicans of the same imaginary crimes – waging wars on women, not caring about minorities, and inflicting pain on working Americans to benefit the wealthy. And year after year, Republicans have no effective responses to neutralize these attacks. Or to take the battle to the enemy’s camp.

In the 2012 election, Democrats attacked Republicans as defenders of the wealthy who are not paying their “fair share.” Republicans responded by deploring “class warfare rhetoric,” which does not answer the charge that Republicans are defending the wealthy and are uncaring. There are plenty of answers to these libels but Republicans don’t have them.

“Caring” is not one among many issues in an election. It is the central one. Since most policy issues are complicated, voters want to know above everything else just whom they can trust to sort out the complexities and represent them. Before voters cast their ballots for policies or values they want a candidate or party that cares about them.

How crucial is this concern? In the 2012 election, 70% of Asian Americans cast their ballots for Obama, even though Asians share Republican values, are family oriented, entrepreneurial, and traditional. Asian Americans voted for Obama because they were persuaded that he cared for minorities – for them, and Romney didn’t.

The Republican response to the Democrats’ attack (that’s “class warfare rhetoric”) doesn’t work because it’s an abstraction. “Class warfare rhetoric” has no human face; it’s about a political style. Criticizing the wealthy for “not paying their fair share” is a direct attack on an easily identified target, which is why so many wealthy taxpayers – including entertainment  figures who are normally Democrats –were outraged by the slander. More importantly, the Democrats’ attack on the rich is an emotional appeal to those who are not rich. It tells them that someone cares about them.

Using the term “class warfare” is a polite way of discussing a problem, a habit Republicans seem unable to break. It avoids finger pointing – naming an adversary and holding him accountable. Elections are adversarial. They are about defeating opponents.

Elections are necessarily about “us” and “them.” Democrats are as adept at framing “them,” as Republicans are not. Democrats know how to incite envy and resentment, distrust and fear, and to direct these volatile emotions towards their Republican opponents. Meanwhile, Republicans are busy complaining about the style of the Democrats’ argument.

Republicans are defending the rich at your expense. Democrats are employing class warfare rhetoric. Which argument is going to grab voters more effectively? Which is going to make voters believe the candidate cares about them.

An exit poll conducted by CNN asked, “What is the most important candidate quality to your vote?” Among the four choices were, “Strong Leader,” “Shares Your Values,” “Has A Vision for the Future,” and “Cares about People.” Romney won the  first three by more than 54%. But he lost “Cares About People” by 81-18%. That says it all.

The margin Romney lost by wasn’t insurmountable. He had the advantage of a good election year for Republicans. Every activist on the right thought the fate of the country hung in the balance. By contrast, Democrats went into the campaign having disappointed a significant segment of their political base. They continued wars they had promised to terminate; and they presided over an economy with high unemployment among key constituencies — women, Hispanics and African Americans. Yet they were able to marshal enough fear and anger towards the Republican rich who were outsourcing jobs and allegedly not paying their fair share to energize their base and produce a win.

Behind the failures of Republican campaigns lies an attitude that is administrative rather than combative. It focuses on policies rather than politics. It is more comfortable with budgets and pie charts than with the flesh and blood victims of their opponents’ policies. When Republicans do mention victims they are frequently small business owners and other “job creators” – people who in the eyes of most Americans are rich.

To counter the Democrat attacks on them as defenders of the comfortable and afflictors of the weak, Republicans really have only one answer: This is a misunderstanding. Look at the facts. We’re not that bad. On the infrequent occasions when they actually take the battle to their accusers, Republicans will say: That’s divisive. It’s class warfare.

Even if voters were able to “look at the facts,” these are not exactly inspiring responses. They are defensive, and they are whiny, and also complicated. Of course elections are divisive – that is their nature. One side gets to win and the other side loses. But even more troublesome is the fact that responses like this require additional information and lengthy explanations to make sense. Appeals to reason are buried in the raucous noise that is electoral politics. Sorting out the truth would be a daunting task, even if voters were left alone to make up their minds.

But voters are not left alone. They are barraged by thousands of TV and electronic media messages, which confront them with contradicting data and malicious distortions. These deceptions are not inadvertent. They are the work of the professionals who run political campaigns and who are hired because they are experts in disinformation and misrepresenting the facts. In the world outside politics this is called lying; in politics it’s called spin, and to one extent or another everybody does it. But Democrats do it far better and far more aggressively than their Republican targets.

Democrats Are Different

There is a reason for this, and it affects everything that goes on in political campaigns. Republicans and Democrats are not similar people who make opposite judgments about common problems and their solutions—spending is good, tax hikes are bad. Republicans and Democrats approach politics with fundamentally different visions of what politics is about. These visions color not only the way each side thinks about questions of policy, but how they enter the arena to face their opponents.

The Democratic Party is no longer the party of John F. Kennedy, whose politics were identical to Ronald Reagan’s (militant anti-­Communist, military hawk, for a capital gains tax cut and a balanced budget). It is not even the party of Hubert Humphrey, who supported the Vietnam War – a war that every contemporary Democratic legislator and operative opposes in retrospect, and many, like John Kerry and Bill and Hillary Clinton, opposed at the time. The Democratic Party has been moving steadily to the left since the McGovern campaign of 1972. It is now a party led by socialists and progressives who are convinced that their policies are paving the way to a “better world.”

This vision of moral and social progress has profound consequences for the way Democrats conduct their political battles. Unlike Republicans, Democrats are not in politics just to  fix government and solve problems. They are secular missionaries who want to “change society.” Their goal is a new order of society— “social justice.” They think of themselves as social redeemers, people who are going to change the world. It is the belief in a redemptive future that accounts for their passion, and their furious personal assaults on those who stand in their way. When he was president, Bill Clinton once told Dick Morris he had “to understand that Bob Dole” – a moderate Republican – “is evil.” It is the same missionary zeal that allows Democrats to justify a campaign ad accusing a decent man like Mitt Romney of causing the death of a female cancer victim.

Republicans see Democrats as mistaken. Democrats see Republicans — whatever their individual intentions and behaviors—as enemies of the just and the good. Republicans have no parallel belief that drives them and their agendas, and no similar cause to despise and hate their opponents.

If Democrats’ priority was fixing government problems would they have failed to produce a budget for four straight years? If Democrats were pragmatic politicians, when they came to power in the face of a national crisis like the 2008 financial collapse, their  first step would have been to seek bipartisan support to  fix the most pressing problems: jobs and reviving the economy. This is exactly what Obama promised during the campaign and is one of the reasons why he was elected. But this was just a campaign promise and is not what he did. He spent his first two years in office pushing a massive new entitlement program. If Obama and the Democrats were interested in addressing the immediate economic crisis they would not have used their monopoly of power to pursue a trillion dollar new social program opposed by half the nation and by every Republican in Congress.

The reason the Democrats made Obamacare their priority is because they are social missionaries whose goal is to “fundamentally transform” the United States of America, as Obama warned five days before the 2008 election. Creating a massive new government program that would absorb one-sixth of the economy and make every American dependent on government for his or her health care was the true order of their business. This was a program they saw as a major stepping-stone on the way to the fundamental transformation of American society.

That’s the way progressives think and Republicans had better start understanding just what that means. Progressives are not in politics to tinker with the existing system, although they understand that tinkering and fixing problems along the way gets votes. They are in politics to achieve “social justice” – to transform the system and the way Americans live.

Why do progressives not see that the future they are promoting – with its socialist “solutions” – has already failed elsewhere, and particularly in Europe? Because in their eyes the future is an idea that hasn’t been tried. If socialism has failed in Europe it’s because they weren’t in charge to implement it and there wasn’t enough money to fund it.

It is the very grandeur of the progressive ambition that makes its believers so zealous in pursuing it. Through government programs they are going to make everyone equal and take care of everyone in need. They are going to establish social equality and create social justice. It is an intoxicating view and it explains why and how they are different from conservatives. It doesn’t matter to them that the massive entitlements they have created — Social Security and Medicare — are already bankrupt. That can be taken care of by making more wealthy people pay more of their fair share. In their hearts, progressives believe that if they can secure enough money and accumulate enough power they can create a future where everyone is taken care of and everyone is equal. Everything Democrats do and every campaign they conduct is about mobilizing their political armies to bring about this glorious future, about advancing its agendas one program and one candidate at a time. No Republican in his right mind thinks like this.

The vision of the glorious future puts urgency into their crusades and encourages them to hate their opponents. A Republican like Mitt Romney may be a decent person, but he stands in the way of their impossible dreams. Therefore, he is hateful. The very grandeur of the dream – guaranteed health care for everyone, guaranteed housing for everyone, guaranteed incomes for everyone – is so inspiring it motivates them to seek the promised land by any means necessary. If this requires lying, voter fraud, or demonizing their opponents as racist, selfish and uncaring, so be it. The beautiful ends justify the not-so-beautiful means.

When Democrats demand free contraceptives and claim that their opponents are conducting a war on women, Republicans shake their heads in disbelief. How could any sane person believe that? The Republicans are missing the point. The issue for progressives is never the issue. The issue is always the transformation of society that they are hoping to achieve. As Sandra Fluke herself put it, the issue of providing free contraceptives is not just about contraceptives, it’s about the whole range of changes that will liberate women (the more government provides for them, the freer they become) and that Republicans oppose.

Progressives’ hatred for conservatives is thus not a reaction to a particular issue, or a particular slip of the tongue. It is a hatred for what conservatives are. Conservatives are people who believe in limited government. By its very nature, limited government means the death of progressive dreams. In progressive eyes, conservatives and Republicans actually are anti-woman, anti-minority, and anti-poor. Republicans oppose the very idea that government should function as a social savior.

Republicans are reactionary and hateful because they stand in the way of a society that can and should care for every man, woman and child from cradle to grave. Republicans take a view of politics that is fundamentally different. Republicans do not aspire to change the world. They want to repair systems that are broken. They are not missionaries, and they are not selling a land of dreams. Such practical agendas do not inspire them to despise their opponents or regard them as evil. Republicans think of their opponents as mistaken about how to fix particular problems.

Because Republicans are mindful of the past, they are uncertain about the future, and therefore wary of impossible dreams. They hope for a future better than the present but they are mindful that things could be even worse. Many problems are intractable and will not go away. Because this is their attitude, conservative emotions can never be as inflamed as their progressive opponents’.

Their instinct is to come up with practical plans and explain how specific problems might be solved. That is why they reach for facts and arguments, and spend a lot of time explaining things to voters. But voters have already been told not to trust their arguments because they are the arguments of enemies of women, children, minorities and the middle class.

The only way to confront the emotional campaign that Democrats wage in every election is through an equally emotional campaign that puts the aggressors on the defensive; that attacks them in the same moral language, identifying them as the bad guys, the oppressors of women, children, minorities and the middle class, that takes away from them the moral high ground which they now occupy. You can’t confront an emotionally based moral argument with an intellectual analysis. Yet this is basically and almost exclusively what Republicans do.

A Winning Strategy for Republicans

1. Put the aggressors on the defensive.

2. Put their victims — women, minorities, the poor and working Americans -­-­ in front of every argument and every policy in the same way they do.

3. Start the campaign now (because the Democrats already have).

The Weapons of Politics Are Hope and Fear

The weapons of political campaigns are images and sound bites designed to inspire the emotions of fear and hope. Obama won the presidency in 2008 on a campaign of hope; he won re-election in 2012 on a campaign of fear.

Hope works, but fear is a much stronger and more compelling emotion. In a political campaign, it is directed at one’s political opponent. Democrats exploit this emotion to the hilt; Republicans often seem too polite to even use it.

The other emotion, hope, is not only weaker, it is at odds with conservatives’ basic pessimism, and their skepticism about political solutions. Unlike progressives, conservatives don’t expect cosmic results from political programs – saving the planet, creating a just world. Consequently, for Republicans, hope is less effective as a political appeal.

Republicans seem to think the way to inspire hope is by offering voters practical solutions, such as Paul Ryan’s plan to balance the budget. Paul Ryan is a smart conservative and the Ryan Plan is probably a good one. But with control only of the House, Republicans had no chance of implementing it when they voted on it. Worse, in the real world of political combat, facing an unscrupulous opposition, a plan offered by a party with no means of implementing it is a self-­inflicted wound. You can’t put the plan into effect to show that it works, and no one besides policy wonks is going to even begin to understand it. All the plan does is provide the spinners with multiple targets to shoot at – something they will do by distorting the specifics and ignoring the plan itself. For virtually all voters, the plan will be so complicated and its details so obscure that it will remain invisible. Only those who already trust its designers will be persuaded that this is a reason to vote for them.

Hope in politics is an appeal to the heart, not the head; to emotions, not reason. Since it is an appeal to emotion, it is normally based on large quantities of hot air. In the 2008 election, hope was the first black man running for president with a serious prospect of winning. It was Obama making an empty promise: “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is a United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America, a Latino America, an Asian America, there is a United States of America. No blue states or red states but the United States.” All Obama had to do to inspire hope was to be black, speak standard English and make this gesture – dishonest and empty as it turned out to be – that promised to unite Americans and move the country past its racial divisions.

The Campaign Narrative

The two emotions that drive politics — hope and fear — are tied together by a narrative that underlies all American political contests. This narrative is the story of the underdog and his triumph over odds. Both Democrats and Republicans shape the narratives of their election campaigns using this story, but do it in dramatically different ways.

When Republicans use the underdog narrative it is mainly as a story of opportunity, of Americans rising from humble origins. This was a principal theme of the Republican presidential convention in 2012 and of keynote speeches by Ann Romney, Governor Christie, Marco Rubio, Susanna Martinez and Condoleezza Rice. It was an appeal to voters to protect and/or restore the values and the institutions that provide such opportunities.

This is a good story of hope, and was effective in the hands of speakers like Rice. But it is not very strong on promoting fear, or in directing that fear towards political opponents in a way that maximizes its emotional impact. Insofar as there is any negative side to the Republican narrative, it is policies rather than a human actor that stands in the way of opportunity. Higher taxes and too much regulation—too much government — will stifle opportunity for Americans who are on the way up.

Here is how Obama dismissed the Republican argument in his acceptance speech at the Democrats’ convention: “All [Republicans] have to offer is the same prescription they’ve had for the last thirty years: Have a surplus? Try a tax cut. Deficit too high? Try another. Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call us in the morning!”

The Republican narrative is an abstraction. It’s about policies and prescriptions, over which reasonable people can disagree: How much opportunity will a three or four percent higher tax rate — the rate that prevailed in the prosperous Clinton years — stifle opportunity?

The entire argument remains intellectual until Democrats enter it, and then it becomes emotional. Democrats present themselves as champions of the powerless, the American underdogs. Their counterargument is that government is required to provide opportunity for those who lack it – whatever the tax rate. In the Democrats’ narrative the private sector doesn’t provide enough opportunity for those left behind, and government programs are necessary to fill in the gap. Democrats want to help people who need help. That is a powerful emotional appeal to all Americans, even Republicans. The Republican argument looks selfish by contrast: Republicans care for helping themselves (don’t raise taxes on the rich) — or helping people who can help themselves — people who can take advantage of opportunities without government help. Unless you understand how the economic system actually works, that’s a tough position to sympathize with.

When Democrats tell their underdog story it is not an abstraction but a powerful, polarizing, emotionally charged attack on their Republican adversaries. In the Democratic narrative, Republicans are cast as oppressors. They are the enemies of hope, and in particular, the hopes of America’s underdogs for equality, a fair share, and a helping hand when they need it. While Republicans set their narrative in a land of peace, Democrats place it on the frontlines of a nation at war. Here is a dispatch from the Democratic convention, September 2012:

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) – Two dozen Democratic women from the U.S. House of Representatives brought the charge that Republicans are waging a “war on women” to the party’s convention stage on Tuesday with sharp denunciations of Republicans on healthcare, equal pay and domestic violence. Led by Nancy Pelosi of California, the only woman to serve as speaker of the U.S. House, the women pressed the party’s argument that the Democrats will protect women’s interests against what they described as Republican attacks.

This staged declaration of war was led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Its purpose was to jump start the campaign’s central narrative: Republicans are waging “war” on women, minorities and the middle class. The Democrats’ narrative centered on how these victim groups were oppressed — or in the case of minorities suppressed — by evil Republicans seeking to turn back the historical clock, denying the powerless and those in need of their shot at the American dream. This is a powerful emotional message.

But there is nothing new about this Democratic strategy. Here is a call to arms from the 1996 Democratic convention: “We need to work as we have never done before between now and November 5th to take the Congress back from … the Republicans, because ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, the Republicans are the real threat. They are the real threat to our women. They are the real threat to our children. They are the real threat to clean water, clean air and the rich landscape of America.”

Republicans are the enemies of women, children and the environment! The speaker of this anathema was New York governor and presidential prospect Mario Cuomo. This declaration of war was made 16 years ago. Republicans have been the target of this kind of attack through at least four presidential elections. Yet they haven’t begun to answer it, and in particular, respond to it in kind.

To this day, no Republican speaks like that about Democrats, and certainly no Republican who is a national figure and party leader. The 2012 Democratic Convention was all about the victims of Republican policies, and about casting Republicans as their victimizers. Democrats had been in power four years, but at the 2012 Republican convention, there was almost no mention of the victims of Democrat policies.

At an election post-mortem, Romney’s deputy campaign manager analyzed the defeat this way: “The bottom line is that the Obama campaign [had] a candidate that was very hard to lay a glove on because [he] was somebody that the American people, by and large, had decided that they just liked.”

This is classic excuse making. That’s what campaigns are supposed to do: make the other candidate unlikeable. The Obama campaign devoted itself to doing just that to the Republican candidate. They defamed a decent, hard-­working American as a dishonest, untrustworthy predator. It was the failure of the Romney campaign to lay a glove on Obama that was the reason he was still liked.

Obama’s campaign manager was at the same conference. His team did not have the view that their candidate was so likeable Romney couldn’t lay a glove on him. Quite the opposite. Their view was that “they would lose the election if it was a referendum on the president.” They chose a strategy of diverting attention from their candidate by attacking Romney as a member of the wealthy uncaring class who fired people mercilessly, shipped jobs overseas and was too rich to care about other people.

Taking A Page From the Democrats’ War Plans

Throughout the Republican campaign, there was a lot of talk about “job creators.” There were a lot of defenses of “job creators,” whom Democrats quickly redefined as rich people who don’t pay their fair share. That’s the problem with playing a “prevent defense.” Most Americans see job creators – employers – as rich people. If you’re defending the top dogs, you’re losing. If you’re fighting for the underdogs, you have to go on the attack.

What about job destroyers? What about Democrats who are killing the jobs of ordinary Americans — not just failing to create them—which is an antiseptic, bloodless way of putting it?

Democrats, who understand the psychology of the underdog, accused the Republicans of just that – destroying jobs. They targeted Mitt Romney with a $300 million ad buy as the nation’s number one job destroyer victimizing working Americans.

Job destroyer was a description ill–suited to a man whose business was reviving bankrupt companies. But it was — or should have been — a perfect fit for his Democratic opponent. How many jobs did America lose under Obama’s anti­business reign?

How many unemployed did Obama create among African Americans, Latinos, women? The official unemployment rate in Detroit after 50 years of Democratic rule and four years of Obama stimulus was 19% but actually 45% were unemployed.

Thirty-­five percent of Detroit’s citizens are on food stamps. Democrats destroy jobs and make people poor. Why wasn’t there a $300 million Republican campaign saying this?

Why are Republicans so reluctant to name the victims of Democrat policies, particularly the victims among America’s minority communities and working classes? Why don’t Republicans identify Democrats as a threat to those communities as Cuomo declared Republicans a threat to women? How can you win a war when the other side is using bazookas and your side is using fly swatters?

Defending the victims of job destroyers is morally and emotionally stronger than defending rich “job creators.” It creates sympathy and arouses anger. It inspires concerns about justice. It’s how the Democrats’ recruit and energize their troops. It’s the way — the only way — Republicans can neutralize the Democrats’ attacks on them as defenders of the rich, and return their fire: by framing them as the enemies of working Americans and the middle class.

During Obama’s four years in office, African Americans – middle-class African Americans – lost half their net worth as a result of the collapse of the housing market. That’s one hundred billion dollars in personal assets that disappeared from the pockets of African Americans because of a 25-­year Democratic campaign to remove loan requirements for homebuyers. Yet in 2012, Republicans were too polite to mention this!

The fingerprints of Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barney Frank were all over the subprime mortgage crisis. The campaign to remove loan requirements for African American and other minority borrowers started with Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act. It snookered thousands of poor black and Hispanic Americans into buying homes they couldn’t afford, which they then lost. How traumatic is the loss of one’s home?

By securitizing the failed mortgages, Democratic bundlers on Wall Street who had poured $100 million into the 2008 Obama campaign made tens of millions off the misery of those who lost their homes. In other words, with the help of Clinton, Frank and Obama, Wall Street Democrats made massive profits off the backs of poor black and Hispanic Americans. But Republicans were too polite to mention it. Here was a missed opportunity to neutralize Democrat attacks on Republicans as the party of the rich and exploiters of the poor. It was an opportunity to drive a giant wedge through the Democratic base.

The bottom line is this: If Republicans want to persuade minorities they care about them, they have to stand up for them; they have to defend them; and they have to show them that Democrats are playing them for suckers, exploiting them, oppressing them, and profiting from their suffering.

Large populations of the African American and Hispanic poor are concentrated in America’s inner cities – Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Harlem, South Central Los Angeles. In these inner cities the unemployment rates are off the charts, the school systems so corrupt and ineffective that half the children drop out before they graduate and half those who do are functionally illiterate. They will never get a decent job or a shot at the American dream.

In these inner cities, every city council and every school board and every school district are 100% controlled by Democrats and have been for more than 70 years. Everything that is wrong with the inner cities and their schools that policy can affect, Democrats are responsible for. Democrats have their boot heels on the necks of millions of poor African American and Hispanic children and are crushing the life out of them every year. But Republicans are too polite to mention it.

In the middle of the 2012 campaign, a teachers union strike shut down the schools in Chicago, Obama’s home town. The issue was not pay but the union’s refusal to allow teacher rewards to be connected to teacher performance. African American and Hispanic children were the true victims of the determination to protect bad teachers and not to reward good ones. Yet Republicans ignored the strike, and never put a face on its victims.

At the Republican convention, one keynote speaker referred to the teachers unions and the issue of teacher rewards and union obstruction. This was Governor Chris Christie, probably the most aggressive and articulate Republican warrior. But here is how Christie framed the Democrat/union atrocity:

We believe that the majority of teachers in America know our system must be reformed to put students first so that America can compete….We [Republicans] believe that we should honor and reward the good ones while doing what’s best for our nation’s future — demanding accountability, higher standards and the best teacher in every classroom.

They believe the educational establishment will always put themselves ahead of children. That self-interest trumps common sense. They believe in pitting unions against teachers, educators against parents, and lobbyists against children. They believe in teacher’s unions.

And that’s all he said. The issues are there – accountability, standards and rewards for teacher performance. The policy is there. But the moral outrage is missing. The victims are missing and the culprits aren’t named. It’s not the “educational establishment” that’s ruining the lives and blocking the opportunities of African American and Hispanic children. It’s the Democrats – they are the educational establishment in every failing public school district. The Democrat teachers unions and the Democrat Party that supports them are destroying the lives of African American and Hispanic students whose parents are too poor to put them in private schools – the same private schools where Democrat legislators and union leaders send their own children.

Democrats will fight to the death to prevent poor parents from getting vouchers to provide their children with the same education that well-heeled Democratic legislators provide for theirs. This is a moral atrocity. This is an issue to get angry about and mobilize constituencies over. This is an issue that could drive a Gibraltar-size wedge through the Democratic base. But Republicans are too polite to do that.

This is merely the most obvious atrocity that Democrats are committing against America’s impoverished minorities. Subverting family structures through a misconceived welfare system, encouraging food stamp dependency, providing incentives to bring into this world massive numbers of children who have no prospect of a decent life just to earn a welfare dollar. These are the corrupt fruits of Democratic welfare policies which are spiraling out of control. Republicans criticize these programs as “wasteful.” They need to start attacking them as destructive, as attacks on the human beings who are ensnared by them.

The way for Republicans to show they care about minorities is to defend them against their oppressors and exploiters, which in every major inner city in America without exception are Democrats. Democrats run the welfare and public education systems; they have created the policies that ruin the lives of the recipients of their handouts. It’s time that Republicans started to hold Democrats to account; to put them on the defensive and take away the moral high ground, which they now occupy illegitimately. 

Government welfare is not just wasteful; it is destructive. The public school system in America’s inner cities is not merely ineffective; it is racist and criminal.

Democrats regard politics as a war conducted by other means. Their agenda is not to seek compromise over practical solutions to complex problems. It is to achieve power to dictate the fundamental transformation of American society into a socialist-redistributionist state. Democrats regard Republicans as enemies standing in the way of social justice and social progress. Every issue for them is a means to a greater end, which first of all is power, and beyond that the transformation of American society into a socialist-redistributionist state.

Because Democrats regard politics as war conducted by other means, they seek to demonize and destroy their opponents as the enemies of progress, of social justice and minority rights. Republicans can only counter these attacks by turning the Democrats’ guns around — by exposing them as the enforcers of injustice, particularly to minorities and the poor, the exploiters of society’s vulnerable and the reactionary proponents of policies that have proven bankrupt and destructive all over the world.

David invites readers to check out the the site of the organization he has established to disseminate the message of this essay: GoForTheHeart.org. David acknowledges the support of James Cowden in making possible the printing of this essay in pamphlet form.

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