Yes,: 'America Coulda Remained a Champion ' but for Obama, the dummy president! (See 1
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I can report co-operation between Israel and Palestinian authorities continues and Israel has released tax revenue funds to Abbas's PLO, but withheld funds going to Hamas.
As I write over 184 rockets have been fired from Gaza today, 331 in the last three days and over 1 million Israelis have moved into shelters and thus, Israel has no choice. The Cabinet has called up 40,000 reservists.
No Democracy can allow rocket attacks to rain down on its citizens without a response
I know it is easy for me to say but Hamas gives Israelis seconds to seek shelter from random rocket attacks.
Israel should give Gazans a few minutes to vacate all facilities where rockets are stored, ie. schools, hospitals and churches and then the IAF should level them. This is a message that Palestinians might understand but of course,, the world would be enraged.
However, that is what we did to Dresden in WW 2. We firebombed the entire city.
And as I stated previously. (See 2a below.)
Meanwhile The Brit is back:
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Dick
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Article by Alan Caruba:
"I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he's led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group (George Soros anybody?) took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.
In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? "Dreams of My Father" was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The "Audacity of Hope" followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a "communist with a small 'c'" was the real author. His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley's formidable political machine at his disposal. He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital. How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?
He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed "cool" in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance. And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole. And then John McCain did something crazy. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska. It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984's Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat.
The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary. Now, 5 full years into his presidency, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters.
Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to "wish away" some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe, having gained a foothold in Spain. The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign "world tour" were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions.
Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party's hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party. It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues.
Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an "obstreperous" Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against "jumping to conclusions" about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted "Allahu Akbar." The absurdity of that was lost on no one. He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber "an isolated extremist" only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot.
He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America. He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame.
The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth. Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual's life. When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------We laugh at the ventriloquist's dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States.
2)
Reasserting Israel's deterrent posture
Author: Michael Freund
The violence that has swept across Israel over the past week, ranging from rock-throwing to rioting to rockets, underscores the increasingly dangerous erosion that has taken place in the Jewish state's deterrent posture.
Simultaneously, Israel now finds itself under assault from both Hamas terrorists in Gaza and many of its own Arab citizens, each of whom is resorting to violence on a wide scale with what appears to be a sense of total impunity.
And that is what makes it so critical for the government to move quickly and firmly to quell the turmoil.
If allowed to continue unabated, the mayhem might not only spiral out of control, but is likely to cause lasting damage to Israel's ability to deter Arabs and Palestinians from carrying out future attacks.
Indeed, as of this writing, Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have fired over 110 rockets, mortars and explosive projectiles at Israel since last Wednesday – an average of nearly 20 a day. Despite increasingly bellicose warnings from Israel's government, the perpetrators went ahead and expanded their range of targets to include Beersheba.
Israel's response has been remarkably tame, with most of the action limited to bombing empty buildings in Gaza in the middle of the night, when the likelihood of taking out terrorists is minimal, as even bad guys need to sleep.
Israeli warnings and threats have been answered by additional barrages of rockets, forcing countless thousands of innocent civilians in the south to live under siege by the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, from north to south, Israeli Arabs have taken to the streets and carried out increasingly brazen attacks, such as stoning vehicles near the Negev town of Omer, attacking police with firebombs in east Jerusalem and seeking to block Route 70 in the north.
Buses have been stoned, synagogues attacked and drivers assaulted in their vehicles as the police largely failed to impose order.
And that is precisely where deterrence, or the lack of it, comes into play. For if those launching the rockets or hurling the rocks knew that their actions would result in dire penalties, they would be less likely to engage in such malicious behavior.
According to the US Department of Defense's authoritative Dictionary of Military Terms, deterrence is defined as “the prevention from action by fear of the consequences. Deterrence,” it explains, “is a state of mind brought about by the existence of a credible threat of unacceptable counteraction.”
Clearly, that “state of mind” does not exist among Hamas terrorists or Israeli Arab rioters, which signifies that Israel has failed to strike sufficient fear in the hearts of those who choose the path of violence.
The key to effective deterrence is to make the cost of misbehaving so great that most sensible people will refrain from crossing whatever red lines are laid down. In other words, there has to be a credible threat backed by the potential use of force as well as the will to use it. And for this to work, it is essential to identify that which is truly important to one's opponent, something they value – be it life, power or money – and then threaten to take it away.
In the case of Hamas, wagging a finger at them and saying “shame on you,” as the government did last week, is hardly an effective means of conveying the message.
Instead, steps such as declaring that any rocket attacks will immediately result in the targeted killing of Hamas leaders both in Gaza and abroad, as well as the destruction of Hamas' governing institutions in the Strip, would create a simple and clear calculus of conflict.
Vague and abstract warnings about “a forceful response” are simply insufficient. A direct and very public link needs to be made between cause and effect, between Hamas' actions and the resulting consequences.
And if that proves inadequate, then there is always the option of ratcheting it up a notch and declaring that the Hamas regime in Gaza will be toppled if the attacks do not cease.
Similarly, in the case of Israeli Arabs who riot, assault motorists and assail police, the authorities need to make clear that unlike previous outbreaks, this one will be met with a firm hand, mass arrests and maximum jail sentences. Anything less than zero tolerance is simply an invitation to troublemakers to foment chaos.
To be sure, deterrence is never foolproof and there is no such thing as perfect security. There will always be those who are seemingly willing to give up everything for the sake of their cause, however irrational it might be.
But when practiced correctly, and with determination, deterrence can ultimately save lives by dissuading individuals or organizations from engaging in violent behavior.
As Sun Tzu, the great Chinese military strategist, noted in The Art of War, “to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the apex of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the apex of skill.”
By upping the ante, tossing aside weakness and indecision, and laying down some clear redlines, the government can contain the current outbreak of violence and reduce the chances of it recurring.
And, most important of all, it can restore the country's posture of deterrence, and put the fear of God into anyone thinking of raising a hand against the people of Israel.
Author: Yossi Melman
The growing Islamist threat to its stability and integrity are a source of concern for not only the Hashemite House of Jordan and its elites but also for Israel, the US and the UK. Jordan has always been a loyal ally of the British and the Americans, and even more so since 9/11 and the war on global terrorism.
The CIA, for example, kept detention (black prisons) centers on Jordanian soil and benefited from its strong cooperation with Jordanian intelligence to interrogate terrorists and foil their attacks.
Israel, directly or indirectly via the US and the UK is, de facto, the ultimate guarantor of Jordanian sovereignty. Israeli intelligence has played a major role in protecting the Hashemite rulers from terrorist plots throughout the years.
The earthquake in Iraq is sending shock waves to the desert kingdom. The Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS), which aspires to create an Islamic Caliphate (Emirate) based on 7th century values, recently published a map of its desired borders, which includes Jordan and Palestine (Israel).
During its impressive military campaign and conquest of one third of Iraq, ISIS warriors took over an important crossing point on the Jordanian-Iraqi border. The effective Jordanian military was placed on alert and tightened its control of the border zone.
During its impressive military campaign and conquest of one third of Iraq, ISIS warriors took over an important crossing point on the Jordanian-Iraqi border. The effective Jordanian military was placed on alert and tightened its control of the border zone.
Yet internal and external threats are not new to the Jordanian monarchy. The Hashemite House has learned to live in their shadow and to overcome them with a little help from its friends – Britain, America and Israel. In that sense, current events echo past ones.
Jordan's location, history and ethnic configuration is unique in the Arab world. Like some other Arab nations – Iraq Lebanon, Kuwait – Jordan was created by colonial powers, which carved out borders with thick pencils on maps. It was given nearly 100 years ago by the British as a gift and compensation to the Hashemite dynasty, which were the guardians of the holy places of Mecca and Medina and lost them and the Arab peninsula to the House of Saud.
For several reasons Jordan has became the most threatened and fragile nation in the Arab world.
It is surrounded on three sides by hostile nations. To the south, Saudi Arabian rivalry is rooted in the old desire for religious hegemony of Sunni Islam. To the east Iraq and to the north Syria, both considered radical national forces angered by Jordan's pro-Western policies. King Hussein, the late father of present-day monarch King Abdullah, was in the 50's and 60's the target of several plots by Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser, who was the great champion of Arab Pan-Arabism, nationalism and radicalism.
Domestically, Jordan's population is divided between a Palestinians majority and the “original” Jordanians. This is a recipe for discontent, as the events of the post 1967 Israel-Arab war showed. The PLO used Jordanian territory as a launching pad for attacks against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and eventually created a “state within a state” in Jordan with the intention of toppling King Hussein.
From its inception in 1948, Israel found in Jordan a tacit ally – based on the old dictum that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The common interests shared by the two countries served as an opposing force to the establishment of a Palestinian state and to Arab radicalism. This engendered secret intelligence cooperation and security coordination. Israeli intelligence tips saved the life of King Hussein. Since the 60's all Israeli Prime Ministers met secretly – sometime in exotic venues such as aboard a yacht or a medical clinic in London – with King Hussein. They talked about peace but settled for less – secret security collaboration to maintain tranquility along the border and to fight Palestinian terrorists.
At least twice Israel played an active role in preserving Jordanian independence and Hashemite rule. In 1958 Israel allowed British planes carrying troops to cross its airspace on a mission to defend the kingdom from Nasser's plot to overthrow the regime and turn Jordan into a pro-Nasserite republic.
Twelve years later, in September 1970, after Syrian tanks invaded northern Jordan in solidarity with the PLO struggle against King Hussein, Israel, encouraged by the US, massed troops and threatened to invade Jordan and repel the Syrians. Eventually President Hafez Assad (the father of Bashar) got the message and withdrew his forces.
True, there were those – the late Ariel Sharon was one of them – who argued that instead of assisting the monarchy, Israel should help its enemies in their attempts to over throw the regime and turn Jordan into the state of the Palestinians, thus satisfying their aspirations for statehood.
But since the 1980's these voices have been marginalized, and certainly after the 1994 peace treaty between the two countries was signed. Nowadays, most Israeli strategists and leaders see Jordan as a buffer state vital for Israeli security, and King Abdullah as a solid ally.
With the advancement of radical Sunni forces from Iraq toward Jordan's borders, the clandestine cooperation and consultations between Israel and Jordan are increasing. It is hard to believe that Israel will allow Jordan to fall into ISIL's hands. If such a danger grows acute one can envision even direct Israeli military intervention, or at least the use of the Israeli Air Force to defend the monarchy and Jordanian independence.
Yossi Melman is an Israeli security and intelligence commentator and co-author of “Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel's Secret Wars”.
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