Daniel Pipes and defining terrorism! (See 1 below.)
===
An interview with Israel's Defense Minister. (See 2 below.)
Meanwhile, The State Department remains 'ticked' by Yaalon, who refuses to be their patsy and continues his hawkish stance. (See 2a below)
The Democrats are coming. Click on:
===
China outfits and launches a nuclear sub thus, sending a clear signal it sees itself in a different light and warns America it should as well. (See 3 below.)
===
At this week's debate, we got a 'smidgen' of a glimpse of what Michelle Nunn is really about. But we also saw what David Perdue stands for and why he is the better candidate to take us in a new direction.
Here's what we learned: (See 4 and 4a below.)
===
Meanwhile, this guy seems to be thinking in a rational manner and posing some questions that need answering. (See 5 below.)
===
Meanwhile, this guy seems to be thinking in a rational manner and posing some questions that need answering. (See 5 below.)
====
Friedman's Stratfor dismisses the accusation Obama does not know what he is doing when it comes to foreign policy and simply suggests events in the world are beyond any president's control because they involve impersonal forces. Meanwhile, Friedman acknowledges had Clinton played his hand differently vis a vis Islamist terrorists, GW's might have had a far different presidency.
Friedman makes a dispassionate explanation of his thinking when it comes to foreign affairs and concludes, in Obama's case "...The problem ... Obama has, which has crippled his foreign policy, is that his principles have not been defined with enough rigor to provide definitive guidance in a crisis. .."
In matters of foreign affairs the best a president can hope to accomplish is through his administration's tactics.
An interesting article that provides cover for Obama which I am not totally willing to buy but still worth reading and thinking about. (See 6, 6a, 6b, 6c and 6d below.)
===
The Nov. election is upon us and one would think if Republicans capture the Senate the market would rally. However, there is a growing possibility which party controls the Senate may not be settled until well past December and thus, uncertainty, never is a positive factor.
The recent market slide has brutalized energy as the price has fallen to levels that create technical concern and a selected list of major corporations have come under pressure for failing to measure up earning wise as well as some reduced multiples for a list of technology companies.
The reaction to date has been long overdue and is healthy as The Fed concludes its stimulus. There are some who believe weakness in Europe and our own slow recovery will force The Fed to return to some form of Q 4 or continuance of Q 3.
Third quarter earnings were generally good but , in many instances, due more to cost cutting than true growth in demand. Notwithstanding, the Administration's message about improvement in employment there is no real evidence employment is producing significant take home pay numbers and 2015 will witness a host of tax increase (see 4 below.).
As we enter the final months of the year I expect continued volatility and a considerable amount of year end tax selling pressures and a retest of recent lows. Nevertheless, I expect a year end rally barring some external event that would add further instability to an already unsettled market.
At best, 2015 should be a very subdued year unless Republicans capture the Senate and are able to initiate a host of positive legislation that will get our nation back on a better growth track and Obama does not throw sand in the gears.
That is a tall order to hope for but hope springs eternal unless it does not and then after 50 years in the market what do I now?
===
The problem Hillary hs when she tries to speak from the heart is that she has no heart. She is all guile!
===
Dick
1)Terrorism Defies Definition
by Daniel Pipes and Teri Blumenfeld
The Washington Times
The Washington Times
Defining terrorism has practical implications because formally certifying an act of violence as terrorist has important consequences in U.S. law.
Terrorism suspects can be held longer than criminal suspects after arrest without an indictment They can be interrogated without a lawyer present. They receive longer prison sentences. "Terrorist inmates" are subject to many extra restrictions known as Special Administrative Measures, or SAMs. The
"Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002" gives corporate victims of terrorism special breaks (it is currently up for renewal) and protects owners of buildings from certain lawsuits. When terrorism is invoked, families of victims, such as of the 2009 Ft. Hood attack, win extra benefits such as tax breaks, life insurance, and combat-related pay. They can even be handed a New York City skyscraper.
The "Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002" greatly increased the importance of defining what "terrorism" means.
|
Despite the legal power of this term, however, terrorism remains undefined beyond a vague sense of "a non-state actor attacking civilian targets to spread fear for some putative political goal." One study, Political Terrorism, lists 109 definitions. American security specialist David Tucker wryly remarks that "Above the gates of hell is the warning that all that who enter should abandon hope. Less dire but to the same effect is the warning given to those who try to define terrorism." The Israeli counterterrorism specialist Boaz Ganor jokes that "The struggle to define terrorism is sometimes as hard as the struggle against terrorism itself."
This lack of specificity wreaks chaos, especially among police, prosecutors, politicians, press, and professors.
"Violence carried out in connection with an internationally sanctioned terrorist group" such as Al-Qaeda, Hizbullah, or Hamas has become the working police definition of terrorism. This explains such peculiar statements after an attack as, "We have not found any links to terrorism," which absurdly implies that "lone wolves" are never terrorists.
If they are not terrorists, the police must find other explanation to account for their acts of violence. Usually, they offer up some personal problem: insanity,family tensions, a work dispute, "teen immigrant angst," a prescription drug, or even a turbulent airplane ride. Emphasizing personal demons over ideology, they focus on an perpetrator's (usually irrelevant) private life, ignoring his far more significant political motives.
But then, inconsistently, they do not require some connection to an international group. When Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez shot eight rounds at the White House in November 2011, the U.S. attorney asserted that "Firing an assault rifle at the White House to make a political statement is terrorism, plain and simple" – no international terrorist group needed. Similarly, after Paul Anthony Ciancia went on a shooting spree at Los Angeles International Airport in November 2013, killing a TSA officer, the indictment accused him of "substantial planning and premeditation to cause the death of a person and to commit an act of terrorism."
This terminological irregularity breeds utter confusion. The whole world calls the Boston Marathon bombings terrorism – except the Department of the Treasury, which, 1½ years on "has not determined that there has been an 'act of terrorism' under the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act." The judge presiding over the terrorism trial in January 2014 of Jose Pimentel, accused of planning to set off pipe bombs in Manhattan, denied the prosecution's request for an expert to justify a charge of terrorism. Government officials sometimes just throw up their hands: Asked in June 2013 if the U.S. government considers the Talibana terrorist group, the State Department spokeswoman replied "Well, I'm not sure how they're defined at this particular moment."
The whole world, except of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, sees the Boston Marathon bombings as terrorism.
|
A May 2013 shooting in New Orleans, which injured 19, was even more muddled. An FBI spokeswoman called it not terrorism but "strictly an act of street violence." The mayor disagreed; asked if he considered it terrorism, he said "I think so," because families "are afraid of going outside." Challenged to disentangle this contradiction, a supervisory special agent in the FBI's New Orleans field made matters even more opaque: "You can say this is definitely urban terrorism; it's urban terror. But from the FBI standpoint and for what we deal with on a national level, it's not what we consider terrorism, per se." Got that?
The U.S. Department of State has yet to figure out whether the Taliban are or are not terrorists.
|
This lack of clarity presents a significant public policy challenge. Terrorism, with all its legal and financial implications, cannot remain a vague, subjective concept but requires a precise and accurate definition, consistently applied.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum, where Teri Blumenfeld is a researcher. © 2014 All rights reserved by Daniel Pipes and Teri Blumenfeld.
2)- An interview with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon
Lally Weymouth is a senior associate editor at The Washington Post.Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, known as a hawk, heightened U.S.-Israeli tensions earlier this year by criticizing John Kerry, saying the U.S. secretary of state had a“misplaced obsession and messianic fervor” about the peace process. On a trip to the United States this past week during which he met with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Yaalon spoke with The Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth about the threat he sees from Iran, the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Excerpts:You caused quite a stir with your remarks about Secretary Kerry.We overcame that.Secretary Kerry recently said the lack of resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue is leading to street anger and recruitment for the Islamic State. What is your response?Unfortunately, we find the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dominated by too many misconceptions. We don’t find any linkage between the uprising in Tunisia, the revolution in Egypt, the sectarian conflict in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mainly, these come from the Sunni-Shia conflict, without any connection to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.The core of the conflict is their reluctance to recognize our right to exist as a nation state of the Jewish people — whether it is [Palestinian Authority President] Abu Mazen or his predecessor [Yasser] Arafat. There are many who believe that just having some territorial concessions will conclude it. But I don’t think this is right.Will territorial concessions bring peace?No, they would be another stage of the Palestinian conflict, as we experienced in the Gaza Strip. We disengaged from the Gaza Strip to address their territorial grievances. They went on attacking us. The conflict is about the existence of the Jewish state and not about the creation of the Palestinian one. Any territory that was delivered to them after Oslo became a safe haven for terrorists.Bearing that in mind, to conclude that after the [recent] military operation in Gaza this is a time for another withdrawal from Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] is irrational. If we withdraw now from Judea and Samaria, we might face another Hamastan.So you think Hamas would take over the West Bank?Sure. We just recently intercepted a terror network in the area of Ramallah. We arrested 96 Hamas terrorists.They were supposed to be staging a coup to overthrow Abu Mazen?Yes. They were operated and recruited by Saleh al-Arouri from Istanbul. We saved Abu Mazen from them overthrowing him. It might have become a Hamas-governed entity with Iranian arms.Last summer, you and Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu decided to limit the operation in Gaza — not to reoccupy Gaza.Yes.Was that the right decision?Absolutely. It was the right decision. From the very beginning, we understood it might be a tremendous mistake to send our troops to take over and occupy the Gaza Strip. That’s why we decided to avoid it and to direct our military operation toward the endgame, which was the Egyptian initiative [a cease-fire with no preconditions].Why did the operation take 51 days?Hamas is not marginal. It is a well-equipped militia and has 10,000 rockets, and the know-how and indigenous capabilities to produce rockets [which they got] from Iran. This is not just a terror organization.How do you see the threat from ISIS?ISIS is a new phenomenon, originating from al-Qaeda. This is not a threat for us. This is a threat to the free world as they actually claim to [want to] defeat all those who are not ready to follow their religious, Islamic way — whether they are Muslims, Christians, Kurds, Alawites, Shias or Jews. The idea to confront them by creating a coalition is an awakening. . . . Hopefully the coalition led by the United States will contain them.Kobane [a Syrian town near the Turkish border] is about to fall. The ground forces seem to be weak.I hope it is not too late to deal with it. Air superiority is very important.It is important, but is it enough?It is not enough. Don’t misunderstand me — I don’t recommend Western troops to be deployed. But the troops on the ground, whether they are Kurds, Iraqi armed forces or Syrian militias that are not extremists, should be supported by the West in order to be able to defeat ISIS.Is it too late in Syria?It is never too late. Syria is a microcosm of the region. What we see now is fragmentation, the collapse of the nation-state.So you see a breakup in Syria?Yes. We have Alawistan — an Alawite enclave led by President Bashar al-Assad, who controls 25 percent of the Syrian territory. We have Syrian Kurdistan in the northeastern part [of the country]. We have many Sunni enclaves. But the Sunnis are divided — we have Muslim Brotherhood Sunnis, we have ISIS, we have Jabhat al-Nusra. We have the Free Syrian Army, which we believe should be supported.What is Israel’s strategy in Syria?We don’t want to be involved. We enjoy a relatively calm situation on the border of the Golan Heights. They understand that if they violate our sovereignty, we immediately respond.How are you going to ensure that in rebuilding Gaza, Hamas does not build more tunnels?We believe there is the potential to keep a calm situation along the border with Gaza [since] Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad paid a heavy price [in] our military operation last summer. We understand there is a problem in Gaza — an economic problem, the need for reconstruction.Part of our interest is to pave the way for the Palestinian Authority to get into the Gaza Strip. I’m not sure Abu Mazen is ready to take responsibility.Right now doesn’t the Palestinian Authority have responsibility only for the crossings?Not yet. But the opening of the Rafah crossing point is conditioned on the deployment of the Palestinian Authority troops. We proposed for them to be deployed on the Palestinian side of our crossing points as well.Do you believe in a two-state solution?You can call it the new Palestinian empire. We don’t want to govern them, but it is not going to be a regular state for many reasons.What does that mean — the Palestinian empire?Autonomy. It is going to be demilitarized.In Gaza and the West Bank?It is up to them. According to the agreement, they should be demilitarized. It is up to Abu Mazen if he is able or if he wants to demilitarize Gaza. Otherwise, we are not going to talk about any final settlement.Is Abu Mazen the best Palestinian leader you’re going to get?I don’t know, but he is not a partner for the two-state solution. He doesn’t recognize the existence of the Jewish state.He says he is against violence.Fine. But this is a tactical consideration. He believes he might get more by what he calls “political resistance” — going to the United Nations or to international bodies to delegitimize us. He prefers it to violence because in his experience, terror doesn’t pay off.Is that why you said Secretary Kerry should just get a Nobel Prize and go home? Do you think the West just doesn’t get it?I spoke about misconceptions. It is a misunderstanding, without naming anyone. It might be naivete or wishful thinking — ‘We the Westerners know what is good for the Arabs.’ To believe that you can have democratization with elections . . . it is collapsing in front of us. And part of it is ignorance, yes.Israeli-U.S. relations are in terrible shape. Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama had a bad meeting this month. During the Gaza operation, for the first time, missile shipments didn’t go through automatically.The issue of Hellfire missiles has been solved. It was a bureaucratic issue.It doesn’t look like an unbreakable bond if, in the middle of a war, the administration decides to review what has always been military-to-military arms transfers.I can tell you that between the Pentagon and the Israel Defense Forces there is an unbreakable bond.What about the politicians?We have disputes.It seems to be a deep dispute.With all the disputes, the United States is Israel’s strategic ally.The Nov. 24 deadline for an Iranian nuclear agreement is approaching. Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that no deal is better than a bad deal. What do you hope comes out of these talks?We are concerned about the potential deal. Because the framework of this deal is about how many centrifuges should this regime have. Why should they have the indigenous capability to enrich uranium? If they need it for civilian purposes, they can get enriched uranium from the United States or from Russia. Why do they insist on having the indigenous capability? Because they still have the aspiration to have a nuclear bomb.With a bad deal — saying, ‘We will keep this regime from having a bomb for a year or year and a half’ — what does that mean? What about the missile delivery systems, which are not discussed? Why should they have missiles ready to adopt nuclear warheads?And they do?Yes, hundreds of them. And what about their being a rogue regime instigating terror all over the Middle East and beyond? They are not involved in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or Yemen to serve American interests. This is not discussed. By rehabilitating the economy, they might feel confident to go on with these rogue activities, and at a certain point decide to break out from the deal and to have a bomb. That’s why our prime minister said that no deal is better than a bad deal.And you agree with him?Of course. In a deal they are going to get rid of any pressure. In the end, we should be able to defend ourselves by ourselves.Does that mean Israel alone would consider using a military option?It’s enough to say we should be ready to defend ourselves by ourselves.Can Israel do it alone?Let’s wait and see.As long as Benjamin Netanyahu wants to run for office, will you not run for prime minister?As long as he is going the right way, why should I challenge him?Do you intend to run for prime minister one day?I don’t know. If the people of Israel want me, I will have to consider it.
2a)
State Department Continues Grudge Match Against Ya’alon
Israel's Minister of Defense Moshe Ya'alon, visiting the family of IDF Golani Brigade soldier St.-Sgt. Oron Shaul in the northern village of Poria on August 10, 2014. Shaul was killed by Hamas in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge.
Photo Credit: Ariel Hermoni/Ministry of Defense/Flash90
On Tuesday, Oct. 21, Ya'alon arrived in Washington where he met with his American counterpart, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and American intelligence officials.
However, according to YNet, the Obama administration refused Ya'alon's request to meet with other top U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, Vice President Joe Biden, and National Security Advisor Susan Rice.
The snub was chalked up to lingering enmity resulting from private remarks
made by Ya'alon - but which were publicly reported - in which Ya'alon allegedly spoke derisively about Kerry's efforts to broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.
Ya'alon allegedly said Kerry came to Israel "determined and acting out of misplaced obsession and messianic fervor," and described the American security plan for Israel as "not worth the paper it is written on. It contains no peace and no security."
The Americans went ballistic, saying that if the comments attributed to Ya'alon are accurate, they are "offensive and inappropriate" and described them as "shocking."
Ya'alon later issued an apology in a written statement: "The defense minister had no intention to cause any offense to the secretary, and he apologizes if the secretary was offended by words attributed to the minister."
American officials apparently are not used to being insulted publicly, and when it happens, not having a groveling response. And so, apparently, the fallout continues.
In the State Department's Daily Press Briefing on Friday, Oct. 24, the spokesperson was asked about reports that Ya'alon's request to meet with Kerry had been denied.
The senior reporter in the briefing, Matt Lee, of the Associated Press, asked the spokesperson about the alleged rebuff. Lee asked whether the denial of Ya'alon's request was due to Kerry still being "peeved" by Ya'alon's alleged remarks. Psaki sure seemed to be.
QUESTION: Okay. And then there are reports in Israel and elsewhere that Israeli Defense Minister Ya’alon was denied meetings or the Administration rejected requests from the Israelis for him to meet with, among other people, Secretary Kerry but also Susan Rice at the White House and Vice President Biden. And I’m just wondering, realizing you don’t speak for the White House, can you say if a meeting was sought with Secretary Kerry, who I believe was out of the country until – I know was out of the country until Wednesday night. Was there a meeting sought and denied?
MS. PSAKI: I don’t have anything in terms of internal discussions about meetings to parlay to you, but he did meet with Defense Secretary Hagel, which – who is his counterpart, which is a natural standard procedure.
QUESTION: Is it fair to say that the Administration and particularly this building and then particularly Secretary Kerry are still a bit peeved with Defense Minister Ya’alon’s criticisms?
MS. PSAKI: Well, I think, Matt, as you know, Secretary Kerry has spoken to this himself shortly after the comments made by Defense Minister Ya’alon and made clear that he’d been the target of much worse than words. And I think obviously, he works closely with a range of Israeli officials and he didn’t meet with him this time. He’s met with him in the past and he met with Secretary Hagel, who is his counterpart.
However, Israel's defense minister did meet with the influential Washington Post journalist Lally Weymouth, who began the wide-ranging interview asking about Ya'alon's comments about Kerry, to which the minister of defense responded laconically, "We overcame that."
Weymouth then asked about Kerry's recent statement that the failure to resolve the "Israeli-Palestinian issue" is leading to street anger and recruitment for ISIS. Ya'alon did not mention Kerry by name, but said that the conflict "is dominated by too many misconceptions." He pointed instead to the Sunni-Shia conflict as being the far more accurate linkage. In discussing the Palestinian Arab-Israeli conflict, Ya'alon made clear that territorial concessions are exactly the wrong tack for Israel to take, suggesting that another Hamastan would rise in Judea and Samaria.
Weymouth asked about ISIS, which Ya'alon said is a threat to all of the free world. He also predicted the breakup of Syria, but explained that Israel is remaining out of the equation, although the Jewish State will swiftly and definitively respond to any incursions on its borders from any spillover.
For those with an interest in seeing Ya'alon's public positions on a wide-range of relevant topics including what he calls "the new Palestinian empire," rather than a "Two State Solution," and why he still believes that there is an "unbreakable bond" between the Pentagon and Israel, if not certain U.S. politicians, and next steps with Iran the interview is a must-read.
But here's a tease for the future: for the very last question posed in the printed interview, Weymouth asked Ya'alon whether he intends to run for prime minister one day.
Weymouth asked about ISIS, which Ya'alon said is a threat to all of the free world. He also predicted the breakup of Syria, but explained that Israel is remaining out of the equation, although the Jewish State will swiftly and definitively respond to any incursions on its borders from any spillover.
For those with an interest in seeing Ya'alon's public positions on a wide-range of relevant topics including what he calls "the new Palestinian empire," rather than a "Two State Solution," and why he still believes that there is an "unbreakable bond" between the Pentagon and Israel, if not certain U.S. politicians, and next steps with Iran the interview is a must-read.
But here's a tease for the future: for the very last question posed in the printed interview, Weymouth asked Ya'alon whether he intends to run for prime minister one day.
Ya'alon's answer?
"I don't know. If the people of Israel want me, I will have to consider it." That sounds like a yes, doesn't it?
About the Author: Lori Lowenthal Marcus is the US correspondent for The Jewish Press. She is a recovered lawyer who previously practiced First Amendment law and taught in Philadelphia-area graduate and law schools.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)
One Sunday morning last December, China’s defense ministry summoned military attachés from several embassies to its monolithic Beijing headquarters.
Two days later, a Chinese attack sub—a so-called hunter-killer, designed to seek out and destroy enemy vessels—slipped through the strait above water and disappeared. It resurfaced near Sri Lanka and then in the Persian Gulf, say people familiar with its movements, before returning through the strait in February—the first known voyage of a Chinese sub to the Indian Ocean.
The message was clear: China had fulfilled its four-decade quest to join the elite club of countries with nuclear subs that can ply the high seas. The defense ministry summoned attachés again to disclose another Chinese deployment to the Indian Ocean in September—this time a diesel-powered sub, which stopped off in Sri Lanka.
China is expected to pass another milestone this year when it sets a different type of sub to sea—a “boomer,” carrying fully armed nuclear missiles for the first time—says the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, or ONI.
These boomers’ missiles have the range to hit Hawaii and Alaska from East Asia and the continental U.S. from the mid-Pacific, the ONI says.
“This is a trump card that makes our motherland proud and our adversaries terrified,” China’s navy chief, Adm. Wu Shengli, wrote of the country’s missile-sub fleet in a Communist Party magazine in December. “It is a strategic force symbolizing great-power status and supporting national security.”
To naval commanders from other countries, the Chinese nuclear sub’s nonstop Indian Ocean voyage was especially striking, proving that it has the endurance to reach the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s headquarters in Hawaii.
In recent years, public attention has focused on China’s expanding military arsenal, including its first aircraft carrierand stealth fighter. But subs are more strategically potent weapons: A single one can project power far from China and deter other countries simply by its presence.
China’s nuclear attack subs, in particular, are integral to what Washington sees as an emerging strategy to prevent the U.S. from intervening in a conflict over Taiwan, or with Japan and the Philippines—both U.S. allies locked in territorial disputes with Beijing.
And even a few functional Chinese boomers compel the U.S. to plan for a theoretical Chinese nuclear-missile strike from the sea. China’s boomer patrols will make it one of only three countries—alongside the U.S. and Russia—that can launch atomic weapons from sea, air and land.
“I think they’ve watched the U.S. submarine force and its ability to operate globally for many, many years—and the potential influence that can have in various places around the globe,” says Adm. Thomas, “and they’ve decided to go after that model.”
China's nuclear-sub deployments, some naval experts say, may become the opening gambits of an undersea contest in Asia that echoes the cat-and-mouse game between U.S. and Soviet subs during the Cold War—a history popularized by Tom Clancy's 1984 novel "The Hunt for Red October."
The collapse of the Soviet Union ended that tournament. But today, as China increases its undersea firepower, the U.S. and its allies are boosting their submarine and anti-sub forces in Asia to counter it.
Neither China nor the U.S. wants a Cold War rerun. Their economies are too interdependent, and today’s market-minded China doesn’t seek global revolution or military parity with the U.S.
Chinese officials say their subs don’t threaten other countries and are part of a program to protect China’s territory and expanding global interests. Chinese defense officials told foreign attachés that the subs entering the Indian Ocean would assist anti-piracy patrols off Somalia, say people briefed on the meetings.
Just a reminder when you go to vote in a few days...
In case you didn't notice:
Here is what happened on January 1, 2014
Top Medicare tax went from 1.45% to 2.35%
Top Income tax bracket went from 35% to 39.6%
Top Income payroll tax went from 37.4% to 52.2%
Capital Gains tax went from 15% to 28%
Dividends tax went from 15% to 39.6%
Estate tax went from 0% to 55%Tip of the iceberg, more increases are set for January 1, 2015
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)
Deep Threat
China’s Submarines Add Nuclear-Strike Capability, Altering Strategic Balance
One Sunday morning last December, China’s defense ministry summoned military attachés from several embassies to its monolithic Beijing headquarters.
To the foreigners’ surprise, the Chinese said that one of their nuclear-powered submarines would soon pass through the Strait of Malacca, a passage between Malaysia and Indonesia that carries much of world trade, say people briefed on the meeting.
Two days later, a Chinese attack sub—a so-called hunter-killer, designed to seek out and destroy enemy vessels—slipped through the strait above water and disappeared. It resurfaced near Sri Lanka and then in the Persian Gulf, say people familiar with its movements, before returning through the strait in February—the first known voyage of a Chinese sub to the Indian Ocean.
The message was clear: China had fulfilled its four-decade quest to join the elite club of countries with nuclear subs that can ply the high seas. The defense ministry summoned attachés again to disclose another Chinese deployment to the Indian Ocean in September—this time a diesel-powered sub, which stopped off in Sri Lanka.
China’s increasingly potent and active sub force represents the rising power’s most significant military challenge yet for the region. Its expanding undersea fleet not only bolsters China’s nuclear arsenal but also enhances the country’s capacity to enforce its territorial claims and thwart U.S. intervention.
China is expected to pass another milestone this year when it sets a different type of sub to sea—a “boomer,” carrying fully armed nuclear missiles for the first time—says the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, or ONI.
China is hardly hiding its new boomers. Tourists could clearly see three of them at a base opposite a resort recently in China’s Hainan province. On the beach, rented Jet Skis were accompanied by guides to make sure riders didn’t stray too close.
These boomers’ missiles have the range to hit Hawaii and Alaska from East Asia and the continental U.S. from the mid-Pacific, the ONI says.
“This is a trump card that makes our motherland proud and our adversaries terrified,” China’s navy chief, Adm. Wu Shengli, wrote of the country’s missile-sub fleet in a Communist Party magazine in December. “It is a strategic force symbolizing great-power status and supporting national security.”
To naval commanders from other countries, the Chinese nuclear sub’s nonstop Indian Ocean voyage was especially striking, proving that it has the endurance to reach the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s headquarters in Hawaii.
“They were very clear with respect to messaging,” says Vice Adm. Robert Thomas, a former submariner who commands the U.S. Seventh Fleet, “to say that, ‘We’re a professional navy, we’re a professional submarine force, and we’re global. We’re no longer just a coastal-water submarine force.’ ”
In recent years, public attention has focused on China’s expanding military arsenal, including its first aircraft carrierand stealth fighter. But subs are more strategically potent weapons: A single one can project power far from China and deter other countries simply by its presence.
China’s nuclear attack subs, in particular, are integral to what Washington sees as an emerging strategy to prevent the U.S. from intervening in a conflict over Taiwan, or with Japan and the Philippines—both U.S. allies locked in territorial disputes with Beijing.
And even a few functional Chinese boomers compel the U.S. to plan for a theoretical Chinese nuclear-missile strike from the sea. China’s boomer patrols will make it one of only three countries—alongside the U.S. and Russia—that can launch atomic weapons from sea, air and land.
“I think they’ve watched the U.S. submarine force and its ability to operate globally for many, many years—and the potential influence that can have in various places around the globe,” says Adm. Thomas, “and they’ve decided to go after that model.”
China's nuclear-sub deployments, some naval experts say, may become the opening gambits of an undersea contest in Asia that echoes the cat-and-mouse game between U.S. and Soviet subs during the Cold War—a history popularized by Tom Clancy's 1984 novel "The Hunt for Red October."
Back then, each side sent boomers to lurk at sea, ready to fire missiles at the other’s territory. Each dispatched nuclear hunter-killers to track the other’s boomers and be ready to destroy them.
The collapse of the Soviet Union ended that tournament. But today, as China increases its undersea firepower, the U.S. and its allies are boosting their submarine and anti-sub forces in Asia to counter it.
Neither China nor the U.S. wants a Cold War rerun. Their economies are too interdependent, and today’s market-minded China doesn’t seek global revolution or military parity with the U.S.
Chinese officials say their subs don’t threaten other countries and are part of a program to protect China’s territory and expanding global interests. Chinese defense officials told foreign attachés that the subs entering the Indian Ocean would assist anti-piracy patrols off Somalia, say people briefed on the meetings.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)Subject: 2014 new tax rates...
Just a reminder when you go to vote in a few days...
In case you didn't notice:
Here is what happened on January 1, 2014
Top Medicare tax went from 1.45% to 2.35%
Top Income tax bracket went from 35% to 39.6%
Top Income payroll tax went from 37.4% to 52.2%
Capital Gains tax went from 15% to 28%
Dividends tax went from 15% to 39.6%
Estate tax went from 0% to 55%Tip of the iceberg, more increases are set for January 1, 2015
Remember this fact:
These taxes were all passed only with Democrat votes, no Republicans voted for these taxes.
These taxes were all passed hidden under the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.
These taxes were all passed only with Democrat votes, no Republicans voted for these taxes.
These taxes were all passed hidden under the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.
More increases are set for January 1, 2015.
4a) I've torn out my alarm system &; de-registered from the Neighbourhood Watch.
I've got two Pakistani flags raised in my front lawn, one at each corner, and the black flag of ISIS in the centre.
The local police, Ontario Provincial Police, RCMP and other intelligence services are all watching my house 24/7.
I've never felt safer :)
4a) I've torn out my alarm system &; de-registered from the Neighbourhood Watch.
I've got two Pakistani flags raised in my front lawn, one at each corner, and the black flag of ISIS in the centre.
The local police, Ontario Provincial Police, RCMP and other intelligence services are all watching my house 24/7.
I've never felt safer :)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5) A little sanity please
The following was written by Steven Levy and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.
My confession:
I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat...
Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.
In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.
Apparently the White House referred to Christmas Trees as Holiday Trees for the first time this year which prompted CBS presenter, Steven Levy, to present this piece which I would like to share with you. I think it applies just as much to many countries as it does to America.A little sanity please...
Only hope we find GOD again before it is too late!!
Only hope we find GOD again before it is too late!!
The following was written by Steven Levy and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.
My confession:
I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat...
Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.
In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.
In light of recent events... terrorists attack, school shootings, etc.. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school... The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.
Then Dr. Steven Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about.. And we said okay..
Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.
Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'
Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.
Are you laughing yet?
Then Dr. Steven Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about.. And we said okay..
Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.
Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'
Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.
Are you laughing yet?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
6)Principle, Rigor and Execution Matter in U.S. Foreign Policy
U.S. President Barack Obama has come under intense criticism for his foreign policy, along with many other things. This is not unprecedented. Former President George W. Bush was similarly attacked. Stratfor has always maintained that the behavior of nations has much to do with the impersonal forces driving it, and little to do with the leaders who are currently passing through office. To what extent should American presidents be held accountable for events in the world, and what should they be held accountable for?
Nevertheless, we endow presidents with magical powers and impose extraordinary expectations. The president creates jobs, manages Ebola and solves the problems of the world -- or so he should. This particular president came into office with preposterous expectations from his supporters that he could not possibly fulfill. The normal campaign promises of a normal politician were taken to be prophecy. This told us more about his supporters than about him. Similarly, his enemies, at the extremes, have painted him as the devil incarnate, destroying the Republic for fiendish reasons.
He is neither savior nor demon. He is a politician. As a politician, he governs not by what he wants, nor by what he promised in the election. He governs by the reality he was handed by history and his predecessor. Obama came into office with a financial crisis well underway, along with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. His followers might have thought that he would take a magic wand and make them go away, and his enemies might think that he would use them to destroy the country, but in point of fact he did pretty much what Bush had been doing: He hung on for dear life and guessed at the right course.
Bush came into office thinking of economic reforms and a foreign policy that would get away from nation-building. The last thing he expected was that he would invade Afghanistan during his first year in office. But it really wasn't up to him. His predecessor, Bill Clinton, and al Qaeda set his agenda. Had Clinton been more aggressive against al Qaeda, Bush might have had a different presidency. But al Qaeda did not seem to need that level of effort, and Clinton came into office as heir to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And so on back to George Washington.
Presidents are constrained by the reality they find themselves in and the limits that institutions place on them. Foreign policy is what a president wishes would happen; foreign affairs are what actually happen. The United States is enormously powerful. It is not omnipotent. There are not only limits to that power, but unexpected and undesirable consequences of its use. I have in mind the idea that had the United States not purged the Baathists in Iraq, the Sunnis might not have risen. That is possible. But had the Baathists, the party of the hated Saddam Hussein, remained in power, the sense of betrayal felt by Shiites and Kurds at the sight of the United States now supporting Baathists might have led to a greater explosion. The constraints in Iraq were such that having invaded, there was no choice that did not have a likely repercussion.
Governing a nation of more than 300 million people in a world filled with nations, the U.S. president can preside, but he hardly rules. He is confronted with enormous pressure from all directions. He knows only a fraction of the things he needs to know in the maelstrom he has entered, and in most cases he has no idea that something is happening. When he knows something is happening, he doesn't always have the power to do anything, and when he has the power to do something, he can never be sure of the consequences. Everyone not holding the office is certain that he or she would never make a mistake. Obama was certainly clear on that point, and his successor will be as well.
For any nation, this is unsustainable, particularly when there is no clear end to the war. The enemy is not a conventional force that can be defeated by direct attack. It is a loose network embedded in the civilian population and difficult to distinguish. The enemy launches intermittent attacks designed to impose casualties on U.S. forces under the theory that in the long run the United States will find the cost greater than the benefit.
In addition to these wars, two other conflicts have emerged. One is in Ukraine, where a pro-Western government has formed in Kiev to the displeasure of Russia, which proceeded to work against Ukraine. In Iraq, a new Sunni force has emerged, the Islamic State, which is partly a traditional insurgency and partly a conventional army.
Under the strategy followed until the chaos that erupted after the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, the response to both would be to send U.S. forces to stabilize the situation. Since 1999 and Kosovo, the United States has been the primary actor in military interventions. More to the point, the United States was the first actor and used military force as its first option. Given the global American presence imposed by the breadth of U.S. power, it is difficult to decline combat when problems such as these arise. It is the obvious and, in a way, easiest solution. The problem is that it is frequently not a solution.
Obama has tried to create a different principle for U.S. operations. First, the conflict must rise to the level that its outcome concerns American interests. Second, involvement must begin with non-military or limited military options. Third, the United States must operate with an alliance structure including local allies, capable of effective operation. The United States will provide aid and will provide limited military force (such as airstrikes) but will not bear the main burden. Finally, and only if the situation is of grave significance and can only be dealt with through direct and major U.S. military intervention, the United States will allow itself to become the main force.
It is a foreign policy both elegant and historically rooted. It is also incredibly complicated. First, what constitutes the national interest? There is a wide spread of opinion in the administration. Among some, intervention to prevent human rights violations is in the national interest. To others, only a direct threat to the United States is in the national interest.
Second, the tempo of intervention is difficult to calibrate. The United States is responding to an enemy, and it is the enemy's tempo of operations that determines the degree of response needed.
Third, many traditional allies, like Germany, lack the means or inclination to involve themselves in these affairs. Turkey, with far more interest in what happens in Syria and Iraq than the United States, is withholding intervention unless the United States is also involved and, in addition, agrees to the political outcome. As Dwight D. Eisenhower learned in World War II, an alliance is desirable because it spreads the burden. It is also nightmarish to maintain because all the allies are pursuing a range of ends outside the main mission.
Finally, it is extraordinarily easy to move past the first three stages into direct interventions. This ease comes from a lack of clarity as to what the national interest is, the enemy's tempo of operations seeming to grow faster than an alliance can be created, or an alliance's failure to gel.
Obama has reasonable principles of operation. It is a response to the realities of the world. There are far more conflicts than the United States has interests. Intervention on any level requires timing. Other nations have greater interests in their future than the United States does. U.S military involvement must be the last step. The principle fits the strategic needs and constraints on the United States. Unfortunately, clear principles frequently meet a murky world, and the president finds himself needing to intervene without clarity.
President Richard Nixon had two major strategic visions: to enter into a relationship with China to control the Soviet Union, and to facilitate an alliance reversal by Egypt, from the Soviet Union to the United States. The first threatened the Soviet Union with a two-front war and limited Soviet options. The second destroyed a developing Mediterranean strategy that might have changed the balance of power.
Nixon's principle was to ally with nations regardless of ideology -- hence communist China and Nasserite Egypt. To do this, the national interest had to be rigorously defined so that these alliances would not seem meaningless. Second, the shift in relationships had to be carried out with meticulous care. The president does not have time for such care, nor are his talents normally suited for it, since his job is to lead rather than execute. Nixon had Henry Kissinger, who in my opinion and that of others was the lesser strategist, but a superb technician.
The switch in China's alignment became inevitable once fighting broke out with the Soviets. Egypt's break with the Soviets became inevitable when it became apparent to Anwar Sadat that the Soviets would underwrite a war but could not underwrite a peace. Only the United States could. These shifts had little to do with choices. Neither Mao Zedong nor Sadat really had much of a choice.
Where choice exists is in the tactics. Kissinger was in charge of implementing both shifts, and on that level it was in fact possible to delay, disrupt or provide an opening to Soviet counters. The level at which foreign policy turns into foreign affairs is not in the enunciation of the principles but in the rigorous definition of those principles and in their implementation. Nixon had Kissinger, and that was what Kissinger was brilliant at: turning principles into successful implementation.
The problem that Obama has, which has crippled his foreign policy, is that his principles have not been defined with enough rigor to provide definitive guidance in a crisis. When the crisis comes, that's when the debate starts. What exactly is the national interest, and how does it apply in this or that case? Even if he accomplishes that, he still lacks a figure with the subtlety, deviousness and frankly ruthlessness to put it into place. I would argue that the same problem haunted the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations, although their challenges were less daunting and therefore their weakness less visible.
There is a sphere in which history sweeps a president along. The most he can do is adjust to what must be, and in the end, this is the most important sphere. In another sphere -- the sphere of principles -- he can shape events or at least clarify decisions. But the most important level, the level on which even the sweep of history is managed, is the tactical. This is where deals are made and pressure is placed, and where the president can perhaps shift the direction of history.
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has not had a president who operated consistently and well in the deeper levels of history. This situation is understandable, since the principles of the Cold War were so powerful and then suddenly gone. Still, principles without definition and execution without precision cannot long endure.
6a)
If so, then it should be understood that what the United States is doing here is saying that Palestinians are in the right when they demand that Jews be kept out of certain parts of Jerusalem. But far from disturbing the peace, the idea of building new apartments in existing Jewish neighborhoods in the city or moving into mixed or Arab majority areas not only repudiates the formula of territorial swaps that President Obama has repeatedly endorsed but also reinforces the notion that the Palestinian state that the State Department envisions will be one in which no Jew is allowed to live. That means the U.S. is backing a vision of a Palestinian apartheid state that is itself incompatible with any notion of peace and rationalizing the recent wave of Arab violence against Jewish targets in Jerusalem.
Just this last week, another terrorist incident in Jerusalem took the lives of two persons including an infant. Others were injured in incidents in which Palestinians threw Molotov cocktails — gasoline firebombs — at soldiers and police seeking to restore order after violent protests about Jews moving into the Silwan section of the city. One such bomb thrower — a 14-year-old Palestinian who was born in New Orleans — was killed by Israeli troops while in the process of trying to incinerate them or motorists on a highway. But the State Department didn’t acknowledge that the deceased was killed while committing what would be considered an act of terrorism were the target Americans. Instead, it merely extended condolences to the family of the teenager and to demand explanations from Israel about his death. In doing so, it seems insensible to the fact that by continuing to back up Abbas’ complaints, it is helping to incite the violence that is taking lives on both sides and making the prospects of peace even more remote.
From the point of the view of Netanyahu’s detractors, today’s announcement and the refusal of Israeli authorities to stop Jews from moving into properties that they have legally purchased in East Jerusalem is upsetting the status quo in the city. This is not just a function of the ongoing U.S. refusal to recognize that it is neither possible nor desirable to return to the status quo on June 4, 1967 when half of the city was under illegal Jordanian occupation. The U.S. position also seems to accept the idea that Palestinians have a right to be angry over Jews moving into both Jewish majority neighborhoods and Arab majority neighborhoods in parts of Jerusalem. But both positions are problematic.
On the one hand, the U.S treating more apartments going up in areas that, dating back to the Clinton administration, the U.S. has acknowledged would be retained by Israel in the event of a peace agreement, as either provocative or an obstacle to peace makes no sense. Why should the Palestinians be encouraged to make an issue out of Jews living in places that no one thinks will ever part of a Palestinian state? In doing so, Washington is inciting Abbas to use the existence of places where hundreds of thousands of Jews currently live as an excuse not to negotiate with Israel or even to countenance more acts of terror.
Just as mistaken is the idea that Jews moving into Arab neighborhoods is a good reason for Palestinians to get riled up. If Abbas had accepted any of the peace deals that Israel has previously offered, those places would even now be part of the Palestinian state that he professes to want but refuses to do anything to make it a reality. Had he done so then or even if he were willing to do so now as part of a deal in which the Palestinians agreed to end the conflict for all time and recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state alongside them no matter where its borders are drawn, then it wouldn’t matter if there were a few Jews living in Silwan or anywhere else. Since Arabs are currently allowed to live in West Jerusalem as equal citizens under Israeli law why shouldn’t the Palestinians extend the same offer to the so-called settlers who have moved into apartments in the shadow of the Old City walls?
The reason is that their goal is to create a Jew free state whose purpose will be to perpetuate the conflict against Israel, not end it. The state they envision will be, as I wrote last week, the true apartheid state in the Middle East in which parts of Jerusalem will become legal no go zones for Jews in much the same way, white South Africans made it illegal for blacks to live in parts of their own country. It is exactly for this perverted vision that Palestinians are taking to the streets to lob lethal weapons at Jews while the State Department treats the perpetrators as innocent victims and the actual victims as aggressors.
That is the racism that the U.S. is endorsing by making an issue of Jews building in Jerusalem. Peace doesn’t have a chance until the Palestinians stop being offended by Jews living in the holy city or thinking they are justified in fighting for an apartheid vision in which they are excluded.
Click to view
Abbas made the speech at a Fatah event and the video, which Abbas' PA TV edited into a version showing only the implicit call to violence, was already broadcast that same evening right before the PA TV evening news. For three days, the video that promoted violence to prevent Jews from defiling the Al-Aqsa Mosque was broadcast 19 times as Arab rioting in Jerusalem increased. A three-month-old Israeli baby and a young woman were killed in a terror attack in Jerusalem and one Arab youth was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers as he was attacking Israeli cars with gasoline bombs.
Using common PA duplicity, Abbas is promoting violence while at the same time warning the world about impending violence, so he can claim innocence.
Three days ago, Abbas' Fatah called on its members in Jerusalem to wear identical black clothing to make it difficult for Israeli police to identify and arrest those involved in rioting:
This is not the first time that a Palestinian leader called on his population to defend Al-Aqsa. When Yasser Arafat wanted violence against Israel he likewise defined Israeli presence on the Temple Mount as defiling the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Arafat's call to defend Al-Aqsa when Israeli MP Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount, similar to Abbas' call today, led to extended Arab rioting in October 2000, which escalated into what Palestinians call "the Al-Aqsa Intifada." The PA's five-year terror campaign that started with riots to "defend Al-Aqsa" left 1,200 Israelis killed, mostly from suicide bombings.
Palestinians are already referring to the riots in "defense" of the mosque as an "intifada." For example, PLO Executive Committee member and member of Political Bureau of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Tayseer Khaled said that "the Jerusalem Intifada" will continue because of the visits of Jews to the Temple Mount, which he called "the Al-Aqsa square." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 26, 2104]
Twice Abbas' PA TV has broadcast a documentary film on Jerusalem in which Jews praying at the Western Wall are called "sin and filth," as exposed byPalestinian Media Watch.
Click to see additional examples of PA and Fatah's demonization of Jews and the claim that Israel is endangering the Al-Aqsa Mosque to build the "alleged Temple".
Expectations and Reality
I have always been amazed when presidents take credit for creating jobs or are blamed for high interest rates. Under our Constitution, and in practice, presidents have precious little influence on either. They cannot act without Congress or the Federal Reserve concurring, and both are outside presidential control. Nor can presidents overcome the realities of the market. They are prisoners of institutional constraints and the realities of the world.Nevertheless, we endow presidents with magical powers and impose extraordinary expectations. The president creates jobs, manages Ebola and solves the problems of the world -- or so he should. This particular president came into office with preposterous expectations from his supporters that he could not possibly fulfill. The normal campaign promises of a normal politician were taken to be prophecy. This told us more about his supporters than about him. Similarly, his enemies, at the extremes, have painted him as the devil incarnate, destroying the Republic for fiendish reasons.
He is neither savior nor demon. He is a politician. As a politician, he governs not by what he wants, nor by what he promised in the election. He governs by the reality he was handed by history and his predecessor. Obama came into office with a financial crisis well underway, along with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. His followers might have thought that he would take a magic wand and make them go away, and his enemies might think that he would use them to destroy the country, but in point of fact he did pretty much what Bush had been doing: He hung on for dear life and guessed at the right course.
Bush came into office thinking of economic reforms and a foreign policy that would get away from nation-building. The last thing he expected was that he would invade Afghanistan during his first year in office. But it really wasn't up to him. His predecessor, Bill Clinton, and al Qaeda set his agenda. Had Clinton been more aggressive against al Qaeda, Bush might have had a different presidency. But al Qaeda did not seem to need that level of effort, and Clinton came into office as heir to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And so on back to George Washington.
Presidents are constrained by the reality they find themselves in and the limits that institutions place on them. Foreign policy is what a president wishes would happen; foreign affairs are what actually happen. The United States is enormously powerful. It is not omnipotent. There are not only limits to that power, but unexpected and undesirable consequences of its use. I have in mind the idea that had the United States not purged the Baathists in Iraq, the Sunnis might not have risen. That is possible. But had the Baathists, the party of the hated Saddam Hussein, remained in power, the sense of betrayal felt by Shiites and Kurds at the sight of the United States now supporting Baathists might have led to a greater explosion. The constraints in Iraq were such that having invaded, there was no choice that did not have a likely repercussion.
Governing a nation of more than 300 million people in a world filled with nations, the U.S. president can preside, but he hardly rules. He is confronted with enormous pressure from all directions. He knows only a fraction of the things he needs to know in the maelstrom he has entered, and in most cases he has no idea that something is happening. When he knows something is happening, he doesn't always have the power to do anything, and when he has the power to do something, he can never be sure of the consequences. Everyone not holding the office is certain that he or she would never make a mistake. Obama was certainly clear on that point, and his successor will be as well.
Obama's Goals
All that said, let us consider what Obama is trying to achieve in the current circumstances. It is now 2014, and the United States has been at war since 2001 -- nearly this entire century so far. It has not gone to war on the scale of 20th-century wars, but it has had multi-divisional engagements, along with smaller operations in Africa and elsewhere.For any nation, this is unsustainable, particularly when there is no clear end to the war. The enemy is not a conventional force that can be defeated by direct attack. It is a loose network embedded in the civilian population and difficult to distinguish. The enemy launches intermittent attacks designed to impose casualties on U.S. forces under the theory that in the long run the United States will find the cost greater than the benefit.
In addition to these wars, two other conflicts have emerged. One is in Ukraine, where a pro-Western government has formed in Kiev to the displeasure of Russia, which proceeded to work against Ukraine. In Iraq, a new Sunni force has emerged, the Islamic State, which is partly a traditional insurgency and partly a conventional army.
Under the strategy followed until the chaos that erupted after the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, the response to both would be to send U.S. forces to stabilize the situation. Since 1999 and Kosovo, the United States has been the primary actor in military interventions. More to the point, the United States was the first actor and used military force as its first option. Given the global American presence imposed by the breadth of U.S. power, it is difficult to decline combat when problems such as these arise. It is the obvious and, in a way, easiest solution. The problem is that it is frequently not a solution.
Obama has tried to create a different principle for U.S. operations. First, the conflict must rise to the level that its outcome concerns American interests. Second, involvement must begin with non-military or limited military options. Third, the United States must operate with an alliance structure including local allies, capable of effective operation. The United States will provide aid and will provide limited military force (such as airstrikes) but will not bear the main burden. Finally, and only if the situation is of grave significance and can only be dealt with through direct and major U.S. military intervention, the United States will allow itself to become the main force.
It is a foreign policy both elegant and historically rooted. It is also incredibly complicated. First, what constitutes the national interest? There is a wide spread of opinion in the administration. Among some, intervention to prevent human rights violations is in the national interest. To others, only a direct threat to the United States is in the national interest.
Second, the tempo of intervention is difficult to calibrate. The United States is responding to an enemy, and it is the enemy's tempo of operations that determines the degree of response needed.
Third, many traditional allies, like Germany, lack the means or inclination to involve themselves in these affairs. Turkey, with far more interest in what happens in Syria and Iraq than the United States, is withholding intervention unless the United States is also involved and, in addition, agrees to the political outcome. As Dwight D. Eisenhower learned in World War II, an alliance is desirable because it spreads the burden. It is also nightmarish to maintain because all the allies are pursuing a range of ends outside the main mission.
Finally, it is extraordinarily easy to move past the first three stages into direct interventions. This ease comes from a lack of clarity as to what the national interest is, the enemy's tempo of operations seeming to grow faster than an alliance can be created, or an alliance's failure to gel.
Obama has reasonable principles of operation. It is a response to the realities of the world. There are far more conflicts than the United States has interests. Intervention on any level requires timing. Other nations have greater interests in their future than the United States does. U.S military involvement must be the last step. The principle fits the strategic needs and constraints on the United States. Unfortunately, clear principles frequently meet a murky world, and the president finds himself needing to intervene without clarity.
Presidents' Limited Control
The president is not normally in control of the situation. The situation is in control of him. To the extent that presidents, or leaders of any sort, can gain control of a situation, it is not only in generating principles but also in rigorously defining the details of those principles, and applying them with technical precision, that enables some semblance of control.President Richard Nixon had two major strategic visions: to enter into a relationship with China to control the Soviet Union, and to facilitate an alliance reversal by Egypt, from the Soviet Union to the United States. The first threatened the Soviet Union with a two-front war and limited Soviet options. The second destroyed a developing Mediterranean strategy that might have changed the balance of power.
Nixon's principle was to ally with nations regardless of ideology -- hence communist China and Nasserite Egypt. To do this, the national interest had to be rigorously defined so that these alliances would not seem meaningless. Second, the shift in relationships had to be carried out with meticulous care. The president does not have time for such care, nor are his talents normally suited for it, since his job is to lead rather than execute. Nixon had Henry Kissinger, who in my opinion and that of others was the lesser strategist, but a superb technician.
The switch in China's alignment became inevitable once fighting broke out with the Soviets. Egypt's break with the Soviets became inevitable when it became apparent to Anwar Sadat that the Soviets would underwrite a war but could not underwrite a peace. Only the United States could. These shifts had little to do with choices. Neither Mao Zedong nor Sadat really had much of a choice.
Where choice exists is in the tactics. Kissinger was in charge of implementing both shifts, and on that level it was in fact possible to delay, disrupt or provide an opening to Soviet counters. The level at which foreign policy turns into foreign affairs is not in the enunciation of the principles but in the rigorous definition of those principles and in their implementation. Nixon had Kissinger, and that was what Kissinger was brilliant at: turning principles into successful implementation.
The problem that Obama has, which has crippled his foreign policy, is that his principles have not been defined with enough rigor to provide definitive guidance in a crisis. When the crisis comes, that's when the debate starts. What exactly is the national interest, and how does it apply in this or that case? Even if he accomplishes that, he still lacks a figure with the subtlety, deviousness and frankly ruthlessness to put it into place. I would argue that the same problem haunted the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations, although their challenges were less daunting and therefore their weakness less visible.
There is a sphere in which history sweeps a president along. The most he can do is adjust to what must be, and in the end, this is the most important sphere. In another sphere -- the sphere of principles -- he can shape events or at least clarify decisions. But the most important level, the level on which even the sweep of history is managed, is the tactical. This is where deals are made and pressure is placed, and where the president can perhaps shift the direction of history.
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has not had a president who operated consistently and well in the deeper levels of history. This situation is understandable, since the principles of the Cold War were so powerful and then suddenly gone. Still, principles without definition and execution without precision cannot long endure.
6a)
Bibi and Barack on the Rocks
The White House’s resort to petty insults risks a strategic relationship.
Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama in the Oval Office, Sept. 30. AFP/GETTY IMAGES
S
The relationship between the Obama administration and the government of Israel is beginning to look like one of those longtime marriages you encounter all the time. Maybe you’re in one yourself. He feels, Rodney Dangerfield-like, that he gets no respect. She’d be happy to offer some—if only she could find something to respect.
The solution is a trial separation. Give this couple time apart to figure out what, if anything, still draws them together.
The latest eruption of pettiness—when marriages are in trouble, it’s always the petty things that tell—was the very public refusal of John Kerry and Joe Biden to meet with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon during his visit to Washington last week. Mr. Yaalon was quoted earlier this year saying some impolitic things about the U.S. secretary of state, including that he was “obsessive and messianic” and that “the only thing that can save us is if Kerry wins the Nobel Prize and leaves us alone.”
The comments were made privately but were leaked to the press. Mr. Yaalon apologized for them. His meeting with Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon last week was all smiles. Asked by the Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth about the Kerry kerfuffle, he replied, “We overcame that.”
Or not.
“Despite the fact that Yaalon’s requests to meet with the senior members of the Obama administration were declined over a week ago, Washington waited until the visit ended before making the story public in order to humiliate the Israeli defense minister,” Ha’aretz reported. Mr. Yaalon is now said to be under an Obama administration “quarantine” until he performs additional penance, perhaps by recanting his hard-line views about the advisability of a nuclear deal with Iran or a peace deal with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The good news here is that at least there’s one kind of quarantine this administration believes in. The bad news is that it seems to give more thought to pursuing personal vendettas against allies like Israel than it does to waging effective military campaigns against enemies like ISIS.
The administration also seems to have forgotten that two can play the game. Two days after the Yaalon snub, the Israeli government announced the construction of 1,000 new housing units in so-called East Jerusalem, including 600 new units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood that was the subject of a 2010 row with Joe Biden. Happy now, Mr. Vice President?
The real problem for the administration is that the Israelis—along with all the other disappointed allies—are learning how little it pays to be on Barack Obama’s good side. Since coming to office in 2009, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed, against his own inclination and over the objections of his political base, to (1) recognize a Palestinian state; (2) enforce an unprecedented 10-month settlement freeze; (3) releasescores of Palestinian prisoners held on murder charges; (4) embark on an ill-starred effort to reach a final peace deal with the Palestinians; (5) refrain from taking overtmilitary steps against Iran; and (6) agree to every possible cease-fire during the summer’s war with Hamas.
In exchange, Mr. Kerry publicly blamed Israel for the failure of the peace effort, the White House held up the delivery of munitions at the height of the Gaza war, and Mr. Obama is hellbent on striking whatever deal the Iranians can plausibly offer him.
Oh, and Mr. Kerry also attributes the rise of Islamic State to the Israeli-Palestinianconflict. Maybe if the Israelis grovel a bit more, Mr. Obama will oblige them by recognizing a Palestinian state as his parting act as president. Don’t discount the possibility.
Which brings me to the concept of a trial separation.
Last year, Mustafa Alani, a Saudi foreign policy analyst, observed of Riyadh’s evolving attitude toward Washington: “We are learning from our enemies now how to treat the United States.” Sure enough it wasn’t long after the Saudis turned down a seat on the Security Council and threatened a fundamental re-evaluation of their ties to the U.S. that Messrs. Kerry and Obama went bowing and scraping to King Abdullah when they needed the kingdom’s help against ISIS.
At least the Saudis understand the value of showing they’re prepared to be, as someone once wrote, co-dependent no more. The administration likes to make much of the $3 billion a year it provides Israel (or, at least, U.S. defense contractors) in military aid, but that’s now less than 1% of Israeli GDP. Like some boorish husband of yore fond of boasting that he brings home the bacon, the administration thinks it’s the senior partner in the marriage.
Except this wife can now pay her own bills. And she never ate bacon to begin with.
It’s time for some time away. Israel needs to look after its own immediate interests without the incessant interventions of an overbearing partner. The administration needs to learn that it had better act like a friend if it wants to keep a friend. It isn’t as if it has many friends left
Al Arabiya on Monday cataloged [Arabic] a series of concessions that the Obama administration is rumored to have made to Iran as negotiations approach the upcoming November 24 deadline, a week after the New York Times reported on plans by President Barack Obama to "do everything in his power to avoid letting Congress vote on "a nuclear deal that many lawmakers have publicly worried will be inadequate to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The pan-Arab outlet suggested that lawmakers were particularly unnerved by reports of fundamental concessions across all core areas up for negotiations, including: that the U.S. has dropped its demand that Iran close its underground military enrichment facility at Fordow, that the U.S. has accepted Iran's characterization of its enrichment rights regarding uranium, that the U.S. will permit Iran to operate the plutonium-producing reactor at Arak, and that the U.S. has delinked Iran's ballistic missile program from the rest of its nuclear program. Iranian leaders had demanded that the West cave on those issues, which they publicly described as red lines for the regime. TheWashington Post on Sunday quoted Mark Dubowitz - executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies - worrying that a "cascade" of additional U.S. concessions remained a possibility as Nov. 24 approached.
Congressional legislation, alongside half a dozen binding United Nations Security Council resolutions, has long called for a full halt to Iran's uranium, plutonium, and ballistic missile activities. Bipartisan letters from the House and Senate - signed respectively by 394 members and 83 Senators - were sent to the administration last March demanding that Iran be forced to dismantle its centrifuge infrastructure under any comprehensive deal. Bipartisan majorities in Congress had beforehand sought to pass legislation signaling future financial pressure on Iran should negotiations fail, with an eye toward providing additional leverage to U.S. negotiators. They had been stymied by a White House campaign that included heated language implying that those lawmakers were warmongers. Obama administration figures had meanwhile issued public assurances that U.S. diplomats had sufficient leverage to extract robust concessions from the Iranians. Subsequent developments broadly confirmed the concerns of skeptics, who argued that the sanctions relief provided by the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPA) would leave Western negotiators without the leverage they were counting on to alter Iranian calculations. News that the administration will now seek to freeze out Congress generated harsh responses from Senators from both parties, from top Democrats in the House, and from the GOP leadership.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu made headlines around the world again today with his assertion in the Knesset that he will defend the right of Jews to live in any part of his country’s capital. The statement and the expedited plans to build 1,000 new apartments in Jerusalem is drawing the usual condemnations from the international community as both an unnecessary provocation and a new obstacle to Middle East peace. But what Israel’s critics are missing is that the threats and actual violence coming from Palestinians about Jewish homes, is the best indicator that the sort of mutual coexistence that is essential to peace is currently not in the cards.
“If Israel wants to live in a peaceful society, they need to take steps that will reduce tensions,” Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, told reporters in a briefing. “Moving forward with this sort of action would be incompatible with the pursuit of peace.”
The Israeli move is being blasted as yet another example of Netanyahu worsening the already tense relationship between Israel and the United States. But Psaki’s willingness to jump on Netanyahu after repeatedly refusing in the last week to condemn statements from Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas in which he openly incited violence against Israelis, the State Department stand could easily be interpreted as an implicit approval of the PA position.
If so, then it should be understood that what the United States is doing here is saying that Palestinians are in the right when they demand that Jews be kept out of certain parts of Jerusalem. But far from disturbing the peace, the idea of building new apartments in existing Jewish neighborhoods in the city or moving into mixed or Arab majority areas not only repudiates the formula of territorial swaps that President Obama has repeatedly endorsed but also reinforces the notion that the Palestinian state that the State Department envisions will be one in which no Jew is allowed to live. That means the U.S. is backing a vision of a Palestinian apartheid state that is itself incompatible with any notion of peace and rationalizing the recent wave of Arab violence against Jewish targets in Jerusalem.
Just this last week, another terrorist incident in Jerusalem took the lives of two persons including an infant. Others were injured in incidents in which Palestinians threw Molotov cocktails — gasoline firebombs — at soldiers and police seeking to restore order after violent protests about Jews moving into the Silwan section of the city. One such bomb thrower — a 14-year-old Palestinian who was born in New Orleans — was killed by Israeli troops while in the process of trying to incinerate them or motorists on a highway. But the State Department didn’t acknowledge that the deceased was killed while committing what would be considered an act of terrorism were the target Americans. Instead, it merely extended condolences to the family of the teenager and to demand explanations from Israel about his death. In doing so, it seems insensible to the fact that by continuing to back up Abbas’ complaints, it is helping to incite the violence that is taking lives on both sides and making the prospects of peace even more remote.
From the point of the view of Netanyahu’s detractors, today’s announcement and the refusal of Israeli authorities to stop Jews from moving into properties that they have legally purchased in East Jerusalem is upsetting the status quo in the city. This is not just a function of the ongoing U.S. refusal to recognize that it is neither possible nor desirable to return to the status quo on June 4, 1967 when half of the city was under illegal Jordanian occupation. The U.S. position also seems to accept the idea that Palestinians have a right to be angry over Jews moving into both Jewish majority neighborhoods and Arab majority neighborhoods in parts of Jerusalem. But both positions are problematic.
On the one hand, the U.S treating more apartments going up in areas that, dating back to the Clinton administration, the U.S. has acknowledged would be retained by Israel in the event of a peace agreement, as either provocative or an obstacle to peace makes no sense. Why should the Palestinians be encouraged to make an issue out of Jews living in places that no one thinks will ever part of a Palestinian state? In doing so, Washington is inciting Abbas to use the existence of places where hundreds of thousands of Jews currently live as an excuse not to negotiate with Israel or even to countenance more acts of terror.
Just as mistaken is the idea that Jews moving into Arab neighborhoods is a good reason for Palestinians to get riled up. If Abbas had accepted any of the peace deals that Israel has previously offered, those places would even now be part of the Palestinian state that he professes to want but refuses to do anything to make it a reality. Had he done so then or even if he were willing to do so now as part of a deal in which the Palestinians agreed to end the conflict for all time and recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state alongside them no matter where its borders are drawn, then it wouldn’t matter if there were a few Jews living in Silwan or anywhere else. Since Arabs are currently allowed to live in West Jerusalem as equal citizens under Israeli law why shouldn’t the Palestinians extend the same offer to the so-called settlers who have moved into apartments in the shadow of the Old City walls?
The reason is that their goal is to create a Jew free state whose purpose will be to perpetuate the conflict against Israel, not end it. The state they envision will be, as I wrote last week, the true apartheid state in the Middle East in which parts of Jerusalem will become legal no go zones for Jews in much the same way, white South Africans made it illegal for blacks to live in parts of their own country. It is exactly for this perverted vision that Palestinians are taking to the streets to lob lethal weapons at Jews while the State Department treats the perpetrators as innocent victims and the actual victims as aggressors.
That is the racism that the U.S. is endorsing by making an issue of Jews building in Jerusalem. Peace doesn’t have a chance until the Palestinians stop being offended by Jews living in the holy city or thinking they are justified in fighting for an apartheid vision in which they are excluded.
6d)PA TV broadcasts 19 times in 3 days
Abbas' implicit call for violence
in Jerusalem
in Jerusalem
In the same week, hundreds of Arabs riotedand a terrorist killed a baby and a young woman
http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=12915
Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Palestinian Authority TV produced a short video of Mahmoud Abbas calling for Palestinians to prevent "in any way" Jews from going to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Significantly, PA TV then broadcast it 19 times in 3 days. For this video PA TV chose the part of Abbas' speech of Oct. 17 in which he implicitly calls for Jerusalem's Arabs to use violence against Israelis. Jews' presence at the site which is holy to Jews and Muslims, Abbas said, "defiles" the Islamic holy site and must prevented "in any way." Palestinian Media Watch has reported that expressions like "in any way" and "using all means" are common PA euphemisms for various degrees of violence and terror:
"It's not enough for us to say: 'There are those carrying out Ribat' (religious conflict / war over land claimed to be Islamic). We must all carry out Ribat in the Al-Aqsa [Mosque]. It's not enough for us to say: 'The settlers have arrived [at the Mosque]'. They have come, and they must not come to the Sanctuary (i.e., Temple Mount). We have to prevent them, in any way whatsoever, from entering the Sanctuary. This is our Sanctuary, our Al-Aqsa and our Church [of the Holy Sepulchre]. They have no right to enter it. They have no right to defile it. We must prevent them. Let us stand before them with chests bared to protect our holy places."
The video ends with a picture of Jerusalem and the words: "Arab Jerusalem".
[Official PA TV, Oct. 17-19, 2014]
Click to view
Abbas made the speech at a Fatah event and the video, which Abbas' PA TV edited into a version showing only the implicit call to violence, was already broadcast that same evening right before the PA TV evening news. For three days, the video that promoted violence to prevent Jews from defiling the Al-Aqsa Mosque was broadcast 19 times as Arab rioting in Jerusalem increased. A three-month-old Israeli baby and a young woman were killed in a terror attack in Jerusalem and one Arab youth was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers as he was attacking Israeli cars with gasoline bombs.
Using common PA duplicity, Abbas is promoting violence while at the same time warning the world about impending violence, so he can claim innocence.
Three days ago, Abbas' Fatah called on its members in Jerusalem to wear identical black clothing to make it difficult for Israeli police to identify and arrest those involved in rioting:
"Message to our people in Jerusalem: Tomorrow you should all wear black clothes so that the occupation forces cannot identify young people by the color of their clothes and arrest them later."
[Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page," Oct. 25, 2014]
At the time of writing this, the riots are continuing, and Abbas' official PA daily is likewise heating up the atmosphere. For example, it published this cartoon depicting an Israeli soldier decapitating the Dome of the Rock:
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 10, 2014]
Fatah is also using visuals to promote hatred, and published this image on its Facebook page, presenting Israelis outside the Al-Aqsa Mosque (on the Temple Mount) as wild and dangerous dogs:This is not the first time that a Palestinian leader called on his population to defend Al-Aqsa. When Yasser Arafat wanted violence against Israel he likewise defined Israeli presence on the Temple Mount as defiling the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Arafat's call to defend Al-Aqsa when Israeli MP Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount, similar to Abbas' call today, led to extended Arab rioting in October 2000, which escalated into what Palestinians call "the Al-Aqsa Intifada." The PA's five-year terror campaign that started with riots to "defend Al-Aqsa" left 1,200 Israelis killed, mostly from suicide bombings.
Palestinians are already referring to the riots in "defense" of the mosque as an "intifada." For example, PLO Executive Committee member and member of Political Bureau of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Tayseer Khaled said that "the Jerusalem Intifada" will continue because of the visits of Jews to the Temple Mount, which he called "the Al-Aqsa square." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 26, 2104]
Twice Abbas' PA TV has broadcast a documentary film on Jerusalem in which Jews praying at the Western Wall are called "sin and filth," as exposed byPalestinian Media Watch.
Click to see additional examples of PA and Fatah's demonization of Jews and the claim that Israel is endangering the Al-Aqsa Mosque to build the "alleged Temple".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
