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My friend Charlie Bourland, issued me an "Ice Bucket Challenge" to raise money for our mutual friend Sanders Corbit who is afflicted with ALS.
Sanders attended Georgia Military Academy,some years later than I did , we met at The Landings, became good buddies and were known as The Cadets when we played tennis.
I engaged in Bourland's challenge after attending our weekly Sander's Luncheon and hereby challenge the other attendees, namely Jerry Hipp, Dick Bailey, Buford Price and Lee Ellis as well as any memo reader who want to help eradicate ALS!
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Relying on Abbas, the impotent, as Obama demands of Netanyahu, is a certain road to more disasters! (See 1 below.)
Also, while Obama dithers, goes to fund raisers, plays golf and attends a wedding Putin decides it is time to make his move because he has concluded he can do so without significant consequences. China is also flexing its military by challenging our military flights. Meanwhile, ISIS is developing a real army that we will have to confront now or later.
Obama's dilatory manner is helping ISIS in their money raising efforts.
Obama claim's he is waiting for The Pentagon to present him with a plan. If The Pentagon has no plan then we really are in dire straits because The Pentagon spends endless time and money planning for all contingencies. I suspect Obama is setting The Pentagon up for being just another one of his Pinatas's because Obama is either overwhelmed by events and specific challenges or is intentionally dragging his feet and responding only in a smorgasboard manner of meaningless words because he wants America to become a Gulliver. (See 2 below.)
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Dick
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1) ABBAS CAN'T SOLVE GAZA OR MAKE PEACE
Author: Jonathan S. Tobin
While both Hamas and Israel’s government have been trying to assert that they both won the war that apparently concluded with a cease-fire agreement yesterday, a third party is attempting to stake his claim as the man who can win the peace. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas anticipated the announcement of the cease-fire by vowing to go back to the United Nations on Monday to force Israel to withdraw from all of the West Bank as well as Jerusalem. And some in the U.S. and Israel think the best response to the end of the fighting is to further empower Abbas as a counterweight to Hamas. While this sounds logical, it would be a colossal error.
Some critics of the Netanyahu government believe it has erred in recent years by being so critical of Abbas while essentially acquiescing to continued Hamas rule in Gaza. That school of thought holds that the prime minister thinks leaving Gaza in Hamas’s hands makes it impossible for Abbas to make peace and undermines the chances of a two-state solution. There is no doubt that some in the government would prefer the status quo to a peace deal that would give Abbas the West Bank for a Palestinian state. But those who believe that sort of Machiavellian thinking is responsible for the lack of peace are ignoring some hard truths about Abbas and the political culture of the Palestinians.
A rational analysis of the Palestinian predicament would lead one to think that this is Abbas’s moment. Hamas achieved nothing with its decision to launch a war of attrition with Israel after its members kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teenagers. Nothing, that is, except the utter devastation of Gaza, the loss of two thousand dead as well as the destruction of its terror tunnels and the expenditure of much of its rocket arsenal in return for only a few dozen dead Israelis and little damage to the Jewish state. By contrast, Abbas can now stride into Gaza with his PA forces and claim to be the man who can improve conditions for Palestinians and forge a deal that might give them independence. But those assumptions about Abbas’s ability to act decisively now completely ignore the realities of Palestinian politics as well as the utter incompetence of the PA.
Even if we were to take it as a given that Abbas is as dedicated to peace as some of his American and Jewish friends claim him to be, the notion that it has been Netanyahu’s disdain for the PA leader that has prevented peace is absurd. Throughout his years in power Abbas has had two key objectives: to portray himself as a peacemaker to the West and to avoid being trapped in any negotiations with Israel that might obligate him to sign a deal that would recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state and end the conflict for all time. That’s why he fled the 2008 peace talks with Ehud Olmert even after Netanyahu’s predecessor offered virtually all of the West Bank and much of Jerusalem. It’s also why he boycotted peace talks from 2009 to 2013 and then fled them again at the first opportunity this spring when he signed a unity pact with Hamas rather than peace with Israel. And rather than ask the U.S. to drag Netanyahu back to the table now that the fighting in Gaza is over, he is running to the UN in a stunt that will discomfit the Israelis but do nothing to get Palestinians a state.
The reason he has stuck to this no-peace strategy can be discovered by asking why he has avoided elections (he’s currently serving the ninth year of a four-year term) in recent years with no sign that he is looking to take on Hamas at the ballot box even after their military failure. The unfortunate reality is that Abbas knows that even unsuccessful attempts to slaughter Jews—such as Hamas’s shooting of more than 4,000 rockets at Israeli cities or its attempt to use tunnels to pull off terrorist atrocities—boosts its credibility as the party that is doing the most to “resist” Israel. When Hamas talks about ending the “occupation” they are not referring to the West Bank (which the Palestinians could have had as long ago as 2000 when Israel made its first peace offer) but all of pre-June 1967 Israel, a stance that resonates more with the Palestinian street than Abbas’s clever equivocations. None of the positive statements he has made in recent years or the occasional help he provides Israel can override the fact that Palestinian national identity is still inextricably tied to the continuation of war on Zionism. Abbas may regret this, but he has showed time and again that he won’t do anything to change it.
As the revelations of a planned Hamas coup in the West Bank uncovered by the Shin Bet security service showed, the only thing keeping Abbas in charge in Ramallah is Israel and Palestinians know it. The notion that parachuting Abbas or his PA forces into Gaza will somehow stop Hamas from re-arming or using humanitarian aid to rebuild its bunkers and tunnels is a fantasy. So, too, is the idea that more Western or Israeli support will enable Abbas to govern either the West Bank or Gaza effectively with his corrupt and incompetent Fatah cadres.
It is an unfortunate fact that Israel’s decision to leave Hamas in place rather than seek its elimination has, despite its clear defeat in the field, bolstered the Islamist group. But Netanyahu can’t compensate for that by empowering Abbas. The PA leader hasn’t the guns or the guts to face down Hamas in its Gaza stronghold and doesn’t dare try his luck at the ballot box even in the West Bank where conditions are more favorable to him.
The vast majority of Israelis know that any withdrawals on the West Bank would probably mean the creation of a larger and more dangerous version of the mess in Gaza. That is something no rational government of any kind would countenance. So while neither Israelis or their American allies are satisfied with a reinstatement of the pre-Gaza war status quo, even the dangerous uncertainty such a decision represents is better than repeating the Jewish state’s calamitous decision to withdraw from Gaza in 2005. Boosting Abbas at the expense of Hamas sounds logical, but it is part and parcel of the same fool’s errand diplomacy that brought the Middle East to the current impasse.
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2) Putin Marches Ahead
He plays Merkel and Obama for naifs as he grabs more of Ukraine.
Say this about Vladimir Putin. The Russian strongman has taken the measure of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Obama. He knows they dread a showdown over Ukraine, so he is ignoring their rhetorical protests and moving to carve out even more of Ukraine for Greater Russia.
That's the meaning of the Kremlin's decision this week to move Russian forces into the Ukrainian coastal town of Novoazovsk while shoring up Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. A NATO official said "well over" 1,000 Russian troops, backed by heavy armor, have joined the separatists in fighting Ukraine's military.
The strategy behind Mr. Putin's move into Ukraine's southern coast is to open a land bridge between Russia and Crimea. The goal is to reduce Crimea's isolation so Russian military garrisons can be reinforced by land instead of by air, and the peninsula's economy can be knit more closely to Russia's.The Kiev government is calling this an "invasion," while NATO clings to "incursion," but that's a distinction without a difference. Russia invaded Ukraine in February by grabbing Crimea. It has since escalated its military intervention in multiple ways, including with special forces and by firing artillery at Ukrainian positions from both Russian territory and inside Ukraine. If Spanish-speaking men in army garb grabbed El Paso and Mexican artillery fired at the Texas National Guard, Americans would call it an invasion.
The escalation also opens up another front for the Ukrainian military as it tries to regain control over the east. Ukraine's military has been making progress against the separatist forces occupying Donetsk and Luhansk, and Mr. Putin may figure he had to act now to prevent the rebels from being overrun. Kiev's forces will now have to fight on a third front against Russian soldiers and armor.
The timing is notable, but not surprising, on the heels of the much-ballyhooed Tuesday meeting between Mr. Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Western Europeans, in their desire to have this crisis go away, had hoped the meeting would yield progress toward a negotiating solution.
Opinion Video
Editorial Page dit: Associated Press.Editor Paul Gigot on the political response in the U.S. and Europe to Russia's invasion of southern and eastern Ukraine. Photo cre
But Mr. Poroshenko can't concede territory to Russia without betraying his country, and Mr. Putin can't be seen inside Russia to have abandoned his separatist proxies in Ukraine. When Mr. Poroshenko wouldn't yield, Mr. Putin decided to improve his leverage by creating more military facts on the ground.
The Russian advance is a particular humiliation to Mrs. Merkel, who more or less invited Mr. Putin to escalate. Last weekend she visited Kiev with a public message that there had to be a negotiated solution and Europe had no plans for further sanctions against Russia. That was ample incentive for the Russian to refuse any compromise. His latest grab for territory follows the familiar Putin pattern of responding to every concession with a new provocation.
Mrs. Merkel is supposed to be a formidable statesman but she has been soft clay in Mr. Putin's hands. Every time she backs away from tough sanctions, the Russian advances. He knows Mrs. Merkel's government includes a Social Democratic foreign minister who is soft on Moscow's depredations.
He also knows that she and her fellow European leaders will go to great lengths to avoid imposing sanctions that might harm their own weak economies. Russia also has economic troubles, but Mr. Putin is an autocrat willing to gamble a weak hand for what he considers to be long-term strategic gain. The West Europeans won't take any risks for anything.
On Thursday Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Obama said they will discuss imposing more sanctions this weekend. But if they follow form in this crisis, they will stomp their feet, sanction a couple of more banks and oligarchs, and then beg Mr. Putin to "negotiate in good faith." This would be risible if the consequences for Ukraine, and for the future of Europe, weren't so grim.
Mr. Putin's escalation is also a slap at Mr. Obama, who has pleaded with the Russian that people don't act this way "in the 21st century." Oh, yes, they do. Mr. Obama's refusal to help Kiev with even small arms and antitank and antiaircraft weapons was also a signal to the Kremlin that the U.S. would prefer to look away. The U.S. President has subcontracted out this crisis to the Europeans, which means doing little or nothing.
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A serious response to this serious challenge to Europe's political order remains now what it was when we first suggested it six months ago. Arm the Ukrainians so they can defend themselves. Impose punitive sanctions on Russian energy and finance that will damage the economy and raise the domestic political costs for Mr. Putin. Deploy arms and soldiers to Poland and the Baltic states, and demonstrate the political will to rearm NATO.
Alas, Mr. Putin has concluded that the chances that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Merkel will do this also remain the same—zero.
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