Unilateral Disarmament - Give Up Something Get Back Nothing

N Korea Kabooooom site! (See 3 below.)
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I prefer Sowell's random thoughts to Obama specifics.  (See 1 below.)
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Allen West, former Rep from Florida, now with PJTV.com:  "Next Generation -- Allen West: The State of Our Union Is Failing

Higher gas prices. A higher unemployment rate. Even more debt. Increased tensions in Asia and the Middle East. Allen West delivers commentary on the true state of our union -- and you probably won't hear the same thing during President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday night."

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The thinking of a very bright lawyer/turned former  Dean of a law school.  "Sometimes it is the messenger as Derek Hunter pointed out but when one messenger is speaking to an ever increasing clientele and the other is speaking to constituents, it is difficult for the later to be heard let alone win elections. The Democratic Party is a party of clients seeking money (welfare recipients, corporate cronies), jobs (government employees) or privilege (the homosexual lobby) or combinations (government employees also seek excessive compensation as compared with the private sector). Add to this the youth vote (by definition largely ignorant) and those consumed with envy (the typical academic, for example) and it is hard to envision a coalition that could defeat the Democrats. In fact, it seems likely that then Democrats will take the House in 2014. After all, the main stream media will conspire with the Democrats to blame all that is going wrong on the Republicans or just ignore stories (compare Benghazi coverage with the non-story about Valerie Plame)."
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Glick on Hagel and more Wstern inanities.  (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Unilateral disarmament and with Brennan, Hagel and Kerry, Obama has the three perfect stooges to accomplish his naive goal. Chamberlain would be proud. All we need now is umbrellas. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)Random Thoughts

• 
 
• Thomas Sowell 

Random thoughts on the passing scene:

I can't get excited by the question of whether Senator Robert Menendez had sex with a prostitute in Central America. It is her word against his -- and when it comes to a prostitute's word against a politician's word, that is too close to call.

If an American citizen went off to join Hitler's army during World War II, would there have been any question that this alone would make it legal to kill him? Why then is there an uproar about killing an American citizen who has joined terrorist organizations that are at war against the United States today?

Of all the things said during the gun control controversy, one of the most disquieting has been the emphasis on "mental health." If that ends up letting the guesses of shrinks put more murderers back on the street, the public can be in even greater danger after such a "reform."

However emotionally similar envy and resentment may seem, their consequences are often very different. Envy may spur some people to efforts to lift themselves up, while resentment is more likely to spur efforts to tear others down.

New York's Mayor Bloomberg wants to restrict the use of pain-killers in hospitals. Is there any subject on which this man does not consider himself an expert? There are, after all, doctors treating individual patients who currently decide how much pain-killer to use.

One of the talking points in favor of confirming Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense is that he was a wounded combat veteran. How does that qualify anyone to run the whole military establishment? Benedict Arnold was a wounded combat veteran!

In the modern welfare state, a vote becomes a license to take what others create -- and these others include generations yet unborn.

Some people seem to think that glib and shallow political correctness becomes Deep Stuff when it comes from a TV commentator with a foreign accent.

Can anyone explain why, when someone dies, most of what he has saved up over a lifetime should be turned over to politicians, rather than to his heirs?

The front page of the February issue of Townhall magazine says: "It's Messaging -- not principles -- that's hurting the GOP with Minority Voters." Neglecting to make their message clear hurts Republicans with all voters, but especially minority voters.

Why do so many judges' views of criminals seem to be the opposite of policemen's view? It could be that judges see criminals when they are on their best behavior, while the police see them at their worst. But I believe it is because judges have usually spent more time in educational institutions than policemen, and have picked up more politically correct nonsense as a result.

With all the discussion about gun control, I have not heard anybody on any side of this issue mention how many lives are saved by guns every year -- which are far more than are lost in even the mass shootings that get so much media attention. But most of the media never mention the lives saved by guns.

Does anyone think that Iran and North Korea would be as threatening as they are if Ronald Reagan were President? I don't think it was a coincidence that the Iranians freed their American hostages just hours before Reagan took the oath of office.

People who are forever ready to charge others with "greed" never apply that word to the government. But, if you think the government is never greedy, check out what the government does under the escheat laws and eminent domain.

The latest anti-trust farce is the Justice Department's lawsuit to prevent the makers of Budweiser from buying up Corona beer. Even if this sale goes through, more than half of all the beer in the country will still be made by more than 2,700 other brewers, large and small.

I don't know how many Hispanic votes the Republicans think they are going to pick up by going soft on illegal immigration. But it may not be enough to offset the votes they lose from their existing supporters, not counting the future voters added for the Democrats as a result of legalizing existing illegals and attracting more illegals in the future.

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2)When Bibi Meets Barack: An Imaginary Transcript

By Jeffrey Goldberg

So what exactly will U.S. President Barack Obama discuss with Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu when the president visits the Middle East sometime in the next few months?

In their one-on-one sessions (which both leaders are no doubt anticipating as enthusiastically as middle-aged men anticipate their colonoscopies), I predict the following breakdown: Let’s say they’ll spend three hours together. Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations will get three minutes, the shattering of Syria will get 17 minutes and the remaining 160 minutes will be devoted to Iran

In the Iran conversation, the two men will resume their traditional roles. Netanyahu will begin with a pointed question for Obama: How many more times will the U.S. hold out the promise of direct negotiations to the Iranian regime before it realizes the Iranians are uninterested in talking?

Netanyahu, of course, will have a point. Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at a security conference in Munich earlier this month, offered the Iranians direct talks, which he said must be “real and tangible.” The Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, responded by saying that Biden’s invitation represented a “step forward.” But he was quickly overruled by Iran’s supreme leader,Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “The U.S. is pointing a gun at Iran and wants us to talk to them,” Khamenei said. “Direct talks will not solve any problems.”

Romantic Advances

Netanyahu will surely point out that this isn’t the first time Khamenei has spurned the Obama administration’s romantic advances. Soon after he took office, Obama famouslywrote to Khamenei asking to rekindle their nations’ relationship. Khamenei was decisive in his rejection. There have been quieter attempts to span the chasm between Iran and the U.S., with similar results.

Netanyahu thinks the Obama administration is naive to imagine it can charm the supreme leader into negotiations about the future of Iran’s nuclear project, and the prime minister will want to know from the president when enough is enough.

Obama will parry Netanyahu’s argument by making two points: The first is that he is neither Pollyanna nor Neville Chamberlain. He will argue that there is reason to invite the Iranians to direct, one-on-one talks, again and again if necessary. If there ever comes a time when force is necessary to stop Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold, at least the administration will be able to argue that it tried repeatedly to find a peaceful resolution.

The second point the president will make is this: The Iranians haven’t accelerated their efforts to cross the nuclear threshold precisely because they fear an explosive American reaction. Although Netanyahu is still arguing that the Iranians are accelerating their program, the regime for the moment seems content to be perpetually six to 12 months away from having the capacity to manufacture a weapon.

Obama will argue that the Iranians, though rhetorically pugnacious, have actually stepped back from the brink. Experts who monitor Iran’s nuclear program have said recently that Iran has been taking some of its stock of higher-grade enriched uranium and turning it into reactor fuel, meaning that it can’t be used in weapons. Netanyahu obviously understands the importance of this move: By slowing the growth of its stockpile of enriched uranium even slightly, the Iranians are acknowledging an Israeli red line and moving away from it.

Obama will point out to Netanyahu that, by the Israeli government’s own calculation, Iran needs a minimum of 240 kilograms of 20-percent enriched uranium to produce a bomb. So long as Iran stays below that number -- and the Israelis and the Americans believe that it hasn’t approached it yet -- Israel would have no reason to launch a preemptive strike, or demand that the U.S. do so.

In other words, Obama will be able to argue that the Iranians, while truculent, are aware of the West’s red lines, and have been assiduous in observing them.

Nefarious Doings

A-ha!, Netanyahu will exclaim, seeing an opening: If the Iranians actually care what you think, and actually fear your wrath, then why don’t you crack down on their nefarious doings in Syria and elsewhere? We know the Iranians are training thousands of militiamen inside Syria to turn the country into an even more hellish place if the ruling regime falls. We also know that the Iranians and their proxy, Hezbollah, are trying to destabilize Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, Jordan and Egypt. When, Mr. President, will you wake up to this fact?

The president will answer: You know, Mr. Prime Minister, it would be a lot easier for me to confront Iran over Syria and the Gaza Strip if you tried a bit harder to embolden Palestinian moderates by making gestures toward territorial compromise, even if only rhetorically at the outset.

This will prompt Netanyahu to lecture Obama on the falsity of “linkage,” the idea that the Middle East would be a generally better place if only peace could be achieved between Israel and the Palestinians.

At which point, the president will look at his watch and wonder when it might be time to depart for Jordan, where the king will undoubtedly describe to him at great length the dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood, but will at least do so in a charming manner.

(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist and a national correspondent for the Atlantic. The opinions expressed are his own.)

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2)Classic Hagel
By Caroline Glick 

I think it is pretty amazing that AIPAC is keeping mum on the fact that Obama has nominated a Jew hater and Israel basher to serve as the next Defense Secretary. As I've said before, Hagel's appointment is a far greater threat to the US military than it is to Israel. But still, it is pretty obscene that Obama is getting away with appointing this character to serve as the Pentagon chief.

Today, the estimable Adam Kredo at the Washington Free Beacon reported another classic Hagelian anti-Israel slur and libel. Back in 2003 he gave an interview to his hometown paper saying that Israel “keep[s] the Palestinians caged up like animals.”

And of course, this is only one of countless examples of Hagel's animus towards the Jewish state and its Jewish supporters in the US. But AIPAC is silent.

As I wrote before, I understand that AIPAC doesn't want to fight a fight it can't win. But what fights will it be able to win with a president so hostile to Israel that he appointed the most outspoken anti-Israel senator since Chuck Percy to serve as Defense Secretary? What do they think they will be able to get? A cut-off in aid to the PLO? A cut-off in F-16 and M1A1 Abrams tanks transfers to Egypt? Further ineffective sanctions against Iran? More military assistance to the IDF?

Israel is better off expanding its own defense industries than depending on Hagel for spare parts.

As to the US military, as David Horowitz wrote back in 1992, the movement to assign women to frontline combat unit is not about advancing women. It is about destroying the US military. The fact that Obama didn't even need for Hagel to enter office before taking his first swipe at the military shows just how grandiose his plans for gutting US military capabilities in his second term are.

To be clear, as a woman who served as an officer in the IDF for 5 and a half years, and worked as an embedded reporter with an all male US infantry unit in Iraq, I have to say that I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with women serving in combat. But the purpose of last week's decision wasn't about permitting women to fight on the battlefield. They already do. It was about social engineering and weakening the esprit d'corps of the US military. As Saul Alinsky taught his followers the goal is never what you say it is. The goal is always the revolution.

Delegitimizing and weakening Israel is only one part of the “revolution.” Israel will survive Obama and Hagel and Kerry and Brennan.

But that doesn't mean we and our supporters in the US should keep silent about their hostility just because we know we can't block their appointments. By pointing out their radicalism, we are at a minimum sending out the necessary warning about what their future plans will likely involve. And that is important, because the more they are criticized the weaker they will feel.

2a)The Folly of the West's Alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood

By Janet Levy 

The presence of Muslims in the West is not a recent phenomenon; on the contrary, it reaches back many decades, to Nazi Germany.  Then, a group of former Soviet Muslims, seeking better treatment in Germany, defected and aided the Nazi effort.  Muslim Brotherhood (MB) cohorts in the Middle East conducted a parallel effort.  Later, under the control of U.S. intelligence, many of these same Muslims were harnessed as a bulwark against worldwide Communist domination during the Cold War.  Eventually completely taken over by the MB, these German Muslim cohorts were courted by the West as a most curious partner to counter Islamic extremism.  The locus for much of their activity, which they later used to spread Islam throughout Europe and plan major terrorist attacks in the West, including 9/11, was to become a beachhead in Europe — the Munich mosque.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ian Johnson details this history in his book, A Mosque in Munich.  Johnson examines nearly 80 years of the Muslim presence in Europe and how America helped strengthen the very community dedicated to the destruction of the West.  Most of it is on target, except for Johnson’s crucial underplaying of the Muslim Brotherhood’s key role in the mission to destroy America.

Muslims Fighting for Nazism

During World War II, the Nazis saw an opportunity to use disenfranchised non-Russian Muslim minorities to fight the Soviet Union.  As victims of Soviet repression, Muslims were treated as an underclass.  Their farms were collectivized, their assets were confiscated, they were persecuted for practicing their religion, and their mosques were shuttered.  Thus, they became ripe for Nazi exploitation, and, as devalued soldiers, non-Russian Muslim minorities were eager to be captured by the Germans and fight against Stalin.  In addition, since anti-Semitism was an intrinsic part of their religious doctrine, these Muslims naturally allied with Nazis efforts to exterminate Jews.

Johnson recounts that by the 1930s, another force in the Islamic world, the MB, founded in 1928, was accepting money from the Nazis and using it to establish a military wing.  The nascent organization run by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, focused on anti-British colonialism and opposition to Jewish immigration.  In 1933, al-Husseini contacted the Nazis about supplying recruits for the Waffen-SS, the military wing of the Nazi party, and joining a collaborative effort to eliminate Jewish influence in economics and politics.

Seduced by the oil-rich Caucasus inhabited by the Muslim minorities, Hitler realized the potential of being viewed as a liberator of this oppressed region.  When the Wehrmacht seized the North Caucasus in 1942, the Germans announced to cheers that the mosques would be reopened and the SS began actively courting émigré leaders in the region in an effort to employ Islam as a motivating force to assist their fighting units.

Using Islam to Fight Communism

Just as the Nazis had used Muslims for their own ends, the U.S. government acted similarly, as Johnson recounts in A Mosque in Munich, which traces the United States’ burgeoning interest in using Islam as an anti-communist tool.  As early as 1951, at the end of Harry Truman’s second term in office, U.S. intelligence agencies considered using Islam to shore up the free world in the fight against Soviet Cold War influence and essentially split the Soviet Union by pitting non-Russians against Russians.  At first, the United States concentrated on working with ex-Nazi, non-Russian Muslim émigrés as part of a CIA-funded broadcast organization, Radio Liberty, headquartered in Germany and dedicated to overthrowing the Soviet Union.  At the time, U.S. Cold War policy focused on “containment,” or preventing the spread of Communism.  Eventually, U.S. Cold War efforts became more aggressive, and the goal shifted to overturning communism altogether by various covert operations, economic warfare, sabotage, and propaganda.

Johnson writes that in 1953, when prominent Muslims scheduled a conference — an “Islamic Colloquium” — at Princeton University, they received support from the U.S. Department of State and the Library of Congress.  Prior to the conference, Muslim leaders requested a meeting with President Eisenhower who was keen to influence the Muslim world.  The overt goal of the conference was to promote Islamic “Renaissance,” but it also served to cement U.S. relations with the Muslim Brotherhood.

In order to facilitate the inclusion of MB leader Said Ramadan at the Princeton colloquium, the U.S. embassy in Cairo sanitized Ramadan’s career history to eliminate his close association with the Grand Mufti and his fight against Jews in Israel.  Ramadan was also treated to an Oval Office visit with President Eisenhower.  Of course, Ramadan was not interested in cultural exchanges and fiercely adhered to his political goals of expelling Jews from Palestine and the British from Egypt.  He admired the Grand Mufti, as well as one of the most influential Muslim theorists of all time, Sayyid Qutb, who plainly stated that anyone who failed to follow the Muslim Brotherhood’s views was an apostate who could be killed.  A few years earlier, Ramadan and Al-Banna founded the World Muslim Congress to increase Muslim influence worldwide.  The MB leadership fought communism for the simple opportunistic reason that communist states banned or controlled religion.

By his second term, Eisenhower, a religious man who saw the utility of devout Muslims to fight the atheistic nature of Communism, was more serious about Islam and worried about the growing Soviet influences in Egypt.  By the 1950s, the Soviets recognized the political expediency of reversing their discriminatory policies against Muslims and reopened mosques, allowed for the training of imams and even sending Muslims on the Hajj.  Meanwhile, the U.S. state department, the CIA and the U.S. Information Agency decided to align closely with “reform” groups like the Muslim Brotherhood as an ally against Communism.  The United States shunned alliances with traditional Muslim groups, who were easily discredited by their Nazi pasts and weak religious credentials.  The CIA acknowledged the utility of MB leader Said Ramadan in this effort.

When the MB was banned in Egypt under President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954, Ramadan fled to Jordan, where he was named the West German ambassador at large.  He became head of the Munich mosque, which he envisioned as a beachhead to establish Islam in Europe.  When Ramadan with American backing was able to wrest control of the mosque from the ex-Nazi Muslim émigrés from the Soviet Union, he began proselytizing widely about fighting communism in order to raise money for construction of the mosque.  He secured funding for the building from Saudi Arabia, Libya, Jordan, and Turkey.  The United States had wanted a credible voice in the Muslim world to fight communism and they found it with Ramadan.

Johnson explains how Ramadan created an extensive structure for the MB: an array of front groups that served various functions, including a magazine as a propaganda arm; a Muslim student organization; and an international organization, the Muslim World League, designed to unite Muslims, set policy, and serve as a unified voice.  As he developed strong anti-Communist credentials, Ramadan was able to increase the influence of the MB and internationalize the German Muslims and the Munich mosque.

In the 1960s, the United States turned away from the Muslim Brotherhood, as its attention was focused on Vietnam.  Meanwhile, Ramadan concentrated on building the MB’s global influence.

Fifteen years later, the U.S. interest in using Islam as a Cold War weapon was revived, and the government sought MB help to arm the Afghanis against the Soviets.  In 1973, alleged al-Qaeda financier Youssef Nada took over management of the Munich mosque and led it into the Saudi network.

Partnering with the Muslim Brotherhood against Terrorism

Following the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government began investigating one of Nada’s investment vehicles, Bank al-Taqwa.  Johnson contends that terrorism-financing charges against Nada were never proven.  However, Nada had been active with the MB for more than 50 years, according to Patrick Poole, an anti-terrorism consultant to law enforcement and the military.  By 2001, Nada was one of the organization’s international leaders.  Poole contends that Nada had been involved in money laundering and the funding of several terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda and Hamas.

From the beginning, the Saudis dominated the Muslim World League.  They used Saudi money and the MB ideology, with Munich as its epicenter, to spread Islamic thinking throughout the West.

In 1977, MB leaders met at a lakeside villa in Lugano, Switzerland to set up lasting MB structures, including the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), to provide the theoretical foundation for the spread of Islam in the West.  At the same time, the MB was establishing a foothold in America and decided to locate the IIIT in the United States.  They had turned their student group, the Muslim Student Association (MSA), into a national movement after founding it in America in 1962 with Saudi money.  By the 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood had an impressive headquarters in Indianapolis, its American beachhead, which housed several front groups: the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the MSA.

By 1982, the Islamic Center of Munich was headquarters to a chain of mosques and cultural centers.  MB front groups had been established across the West, coinciding with the economic needs of Europe to import workers, most of them Muslims.  The face of Europe changed as mosques proliferated along with the demand to accommodate sharia law.

By 1990, German intelligence monitored the Munich mosque as it became associated with Islamic terrorism, including the first World Trade Center bombing and Mohammed Atta, who flew the first plane into the WTC, and fundraising for jihad by al-Qaeda’s finance chief and Osama bin Laden’s mentor, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim.

Johnson explains that after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, it became fashionable in Europe and the United States to work with the Muslim Brotherhood to fight terrorism and extremism.  At that point, the West, including the CIA, the state department, and the Department of Homeland Security, viewed partnering with an organization that could talk to the “Muslim street” as a viable counterterrorist measure.

Surprisingly, Johnson appears to lend validity to this tactic and states that the “Muslim Brotherhood does not embrace global jihad against the West.”

He even goes so far as to decry the initial rejection of Tariq Ramadan’s entry into the United States by writing that Ramadan is “hardly a terrorist,” despite Ramadan being the grandson of MB founder Hassan al-Banna, who advocates the eradication of the Jewish state and is suspected of ties to al-Qaeda.  Johnson holds this view despite the stated Muslim Brotherhood’s mission to create “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and G-d’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

In a discussion of issues related to mosque-building in Europe, Johnson opines that “racism is still a big problem” for Muslims.  The author fails to mention that there have been over 20,000 deadly worldwide Islamic terrorist attacks since 9/11 and that Muslims across the globe call for “death to Israel” and “death to America” on a routine basis.  Johnson appears to take Muslim Brotherhood operatives at their word, discounting any subterfuge.  He also fails to even mention the required Muslim doctrine of deception or taqiyya.

Although Johnson engages in a lengthy narrative on Nada and his Muslim Brotherhood involvement, he doesn’t mention the discovery of a key document, referred to in counterterrorism circles as “The Project,” at Nada’s Lugano villa in November 2001.  “The Project” is a 12-point plan, dated December 1, 1982, to launch a “cultural invasion” and eventual conquest of the West to establish a worldwide Islamic state under sharia.  “The Project” incites hatred against Jews, calls for the subversion of Western institutions, recommends escalating conflicts by Muslims living in the West against fellow citizens, and accepts terrorism as a legitimate option to force Islamic rule on the entire world.

In 2004, the FBI discovered a second Muslim Brotherhood document written in 1987, the “Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,”  which outlines the means to dismantle American institutions to turn the United States into a Muslim nation.

Johnson’s failure to mention either document and his benign assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood are major flaws in his book.  A Mosque in Munichprovides a useful account of the history that led to the establishment of the Munich mosque as a locus for Muslim Brotherhood activity in the West, and a fascinating exegesis of how Muslims were used, first by the Nazis, then by the anti-Communists, and finally today in counter-terrorism efforts.  But the conclusions Johnson draws about the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood and their ultimate intentions in the non-Muslim world fall woefully short, especially given significant documentary evidence to the contrary.

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3)Obama Wants to Unilaterally Cut Nuclear Arsenal by One-Third

By Lisa Barron

The White House is set to reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal by one-third, signing off on a new internal review of the country’s nuclear weapons strategy, reports The Hill newspaper.

It says that according to a report by the Center for Public Integrity issued Friday, the recommended reductions were part of a draft version of a classified directive compiled by top defense and national security officials. 

Sources told CPI that Obama, while he has not officially approved the directive, has not expressed any opposition to the findings, said the paper.

It also reports that administration officials had pushed to get the new directive finalized late last year but the White House at that point objected to the plan; Obama’s advisers did not want the directive released publicly before the November election.

Meanwhile, North Korea said it conducted its third nuclear test on Tuesday in self-defense against “U.S. hostility,” and threatened further steps if necessary.

The move drew widespread condemnation, including from Pyongyang’s ally China. Beijing summoned the North Korean ambassador to protest.

North Korea said the latest test had "greater explosive force" than the 2006 and 2009 tests it conducted.

At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Iran is installing new centrifuges for its uranium enrichment program that could cut the time needed to create a nuclear bomb by a third. 

Tehran announced late last month that it planned to install the new machines at its main enrichment plant. 

According to the internal U.S. review, however, using a smaller arsenal to target a limited number of threats, including North Korea and Iran, rather than keeping a large ballistic arsenal, would still allow the country to maintain a viable nuclear deterrence strategy. 

It’s not clear how many nuclear weapons a one-third cut would come to, said The Hill, because the total amount of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal is classified.

The move is bound to draw criticism from Republicans, who have denounced Obama’s stance on missile defense. 
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