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It is impossible to gauge what Obama thinks. (See 1 below.)
This is an important action our government has taken because stopping offending Indians is necessary to let the world know just what our priorities are! (See 2 below.)
But does it top the collapse of Iraq, lying to Americans, trashing the Constitution, indebting our children's future, thwarting free speech and assembly and the list of impeachable offenses is becoming endless. (See 2a and 2b below.)
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More ethnic humor:
A good Hassidic family is most concerned that their 30-year-old son is unmarried. So, they call a marriage broker and ask him to find their son a good wife.
The broker comes over to their house and spends a long time asking questions of the son and his parents as to what they want in a wife/daughter-in-law. They give him a long shopping list of requirements.
The marriage broker takes a long time looking, and finally asks to visit the family again. He then tells them of a wonderful woman he has found.He says she's just the right age for the son. She keeps a Glatt Kosher home, she regularly attends synagogue and knows the prayers by heart, and she’s a wonderful cook. She loves children and wants a large family. And, to crown it all off, she's gorgeous.
After hearing all this, the family is very impressed and begins to get excited about the prospects of a wedding in the near future. But the son pauses and asks inappropriately: 'Is she also good in bed?'
The marriage broker answers, 'Some say yes, some say no....'
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As I have said earlier, Jordan could be next. (See 3 and 3a below.)
This is the price we pay for utter and total incompetency, purposeful behaviour, consistent lies and obfuscation.
It is normal for emotion and political preference and prejudice to drive voting habits and predilections but when the press and media fail to inform, protect in order to anoint their own, our Republic is, not only undeserved but also its very survival is threatened!
This is a personal prediction worth what you paid for it: (See 4 below.)
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More from Dinesh D'Souza! (See 5 below.)
And is Hillary imploding? (See 5a below.)
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Dick
The United States sees an ally in a regime that is too predatory—and too weak—to be a reliable foreign-policy partner
The State Department now says that the United States has “shared interests” with Iran in Iraq, and talks are apparently ongoing between the two countries about the rapidly deteriorating security situation in the country that once hosted half a million American troops. However, the White Houseand Pentagon have rushed to make it clear that the administration would never, ever dream of coordinating military strikes with Tehran. So, the Obama Administration leaks when Israel strikes Iranian missile convoys to Hezbollah and negotiates with Iran about its nuclear weapons program, but it would never coordinate with Iran on Iraq, where Iran is the only actor on the ground with any capacity to stop the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Nope. The cat is out of the bag. The Iraq crisis has made it plain that Iran is now the main pillar of President Barack Obama’s Middle East strategy. Sure, America’s traditional regional partners, especially Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, aren’t going to like the White House’s cozy new arrangement with their most threatening foe. But Obama believes that a U.S. alliance with Iran is the best fit for a hobbled and impoverished superpower that is on its way out of the Middle East.
Obama gave our old allies plenty of warning that change was a-coming. “I think that there are shifts that are taking place in the region that have caught a lot of them off guard,” he told Jeffrey Goldberg in March. “I think change is always scary.” Washington Post columnist and White House sounding board David Ignatius thought Obama was set on building a new regional framework that accommodates not just our closest friends, but everyone—“the security needs of Iranians, Saudis, Israelis, Russians and Americans.” This new architecture, Obama told David Remnick, would create a geopolitical equilibrium “between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran.”
The obvious problem with that idea is that you can’t create a balance of power between two patently unequal entities. Yes, Saudi Arabia has lots of oil money that it uses to buy American airplanes, but without first-rate pilots, technical advisers, and satellite imagery, those high-performance aircraft are no more impressive a line of defense than the Saudi royal family’s collection of Lamborghinis. Unlike Iran, the Saudis also notably lack any capacity to project force beyond their own borders—the Saudis, for example, have no equivalent of the Revolutionary Guards Corps’ external operations unit, the Quds Force. The logical conclusion then was that Obama really meant to say that he was balancing Iran and Israel—the one country that had the means and a possible motive to disrupt his grand regional project.
Who knows when the idea first hit Obama that Iran was a better bet for a regional partnership with the world’s sole remaining superpower than either Saudi Arabia or Israel? Maybe it was after he saw that Turkey, the American policy-making establishment’s favorite example of Islamist democracy, was a paper tiger. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan talks a good game, but when he came up with goose eggs after Obama tasked him to solve Syria, he showed he was nothing but talk. Maybe Valerie Jarrett, his closest adviser in the White House, told him about her childhood in Iran and how nice the people are. Maybe he read some books about the U.S.-Iranian alliance under the shah. Maybe he thought that lifting sanctions and unfreezing Iranian assets was a much cheaper and less risky way of buying friends than sending special-forces trainers and pilots to Saudi Arabia and extending military credits to Israel.
One big part of Obama’s preference for Iran is no doubt a function of domestic politics, which appears to be the lens through which this White House usually interprets actors and events in the rest of the world. The Saudis have a long history of preferring Republicans—Riyadh’s most famous ambassador to Washington, after all, is nicknamed Bandar Bush. The same is true of the Likud crew now in power in Israel—Sheldon Adelson, the GOP’s favorite ATM, backs Bibi as well as Obama’s domestic opposition. With the Saudis and Israelis, the White House sees rich Republicans with a thing for hummus.
The bedrock issue in the Middle East isn’t the Israeli occupation of anything, but sectarianism
But what really irks Obama is the idea that America’s foremost allies in the Middle East hardly reflect his version of American values or interests. The Saudis are wildly undemocratic—they don’t allow women to drive, for Pete’s sake—and export a fanatical version of Islam to the rest of the world. The Israelis might be even worse—a bunch of arrogant light-skinned neo-colonialists who talk about darker-skinned Palestinians, and about Muslims in general, the way that Albert Shanker of the New York City Teachers Union once talked about Bobby Seale. Then there’s the small matter of the occupation, which turns the Muslim masses against Israel’s superpower backer in Washington.
OK, the Iranians aren’t exactly democratic, but they do have real political parties, a working parliament, and elections where the winners get less than 98.6 percent of the vote. Also, from Obama’s perspective, the Islamic Revolution must seem at its core to be a social justice movement, however flawed: The shah was a tyrant and a good friend of Richard Nixon. Overthrowing him was a good thing. In a sense, the Islamic revolution was a historical moment, similar to Obama’s election, putting a minority, the Shia, in power for the first time in history. Sure, there are plenty of problems with Iran, they support terror, as Obama noted in Remnick’s profile, but they’re also, as he explained, rational actors who pursue their national interests. Ergo, we can work with them.
Indeed, there are some clear strategic advantages to working with Tehran. The Obama White House sees five key issues in the Middle East right now—preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons; combating terrorism, of the Sunni variety like al-Qaida; the Arab-Israeli peace process; preventing Iraq from blowing up; and getting some handle on the Syria conflict. As it turns out, Iran also has a stake in all five.
The Saudis don’t. From the White House’s perspective, the Saudis back Sunni terror in Syria and Iraq, they have no chips in the peace process, and if they get a nuke, they’re likely to be much less responsible with it than Iran.
Israel is even worse. Yes, the Israelis set up field hospitals to help Syrian civilians but it plays no strategic role there, nor can it in Iraq, because everyone in the region hates them, at least in front of the cable news cameras. The way the White House sees it, Israel’s nuclear weapons program is also an incitement to its neighbors—Iran probably wouldn’t want one if it weren’t for Israel. And then there’s the way that Israel keeps jamming crowbars in the spokes of the peace process, undermining PA President Mahmoud Abbas, a man of peace, and casting aspersions on America’s dynamic Secretary of State John Kerry.
Iran, on the other hand, has big stakes in both Iran and Syria. In the Arab-Israeli arena, it controls at least one spoiler, Hezbollah, and can burn Gaza any time it likes, with Hamas or Islamic Jihad—and is therefore an excellent source of diplomatic breakthroughs. Iran also has a strong interest in defeating Sunni terrorism and in keeping Iraq and Syria quiet. And then of course there’s the Iranian nuclear file—if we can keep them happy on other fronts, while relieving sanctions, there’s a very good chance that they’ll postpone announcing their nuclear breakout at least until Inauguration Day 2017, by which point the mullahs will probably be too busy arguing over their favorite Hermes ties and Mercedes coupes to waste much time on boring stuff like nuclear triggers and centrifuges. It’s a no-brainer to hand U.S. Middle East policy off to Iran.
But there’s a sticking point, or actually two of them.
First, in making Iran the beneficiary of an American fire sale , Obama may believe that the Iranians will actually be grateful—and will show their gratitude by not embarrassing him in public. But that’s not how the game is played in the Middle East. The Iranians always understood the sanctions regime as a matter of will: If you stick to your position, the Americans will blink first, they’ll soften their position because it’s in their nature—what the Americans fear more than anything is not to be loved for their fairness.
And when you say you’re exhausted, as Obama has spelled out repeatedly, withdrawing from Iraq, scheduling a withdrawal date from Afghanistan, and staying out of Syria because the American people are tired of the Middle East, the Iranians will not come to the aid of a weary nation and its president to provide solace, shade, and a cool glass of water. No, they’ll beat us like the beaten dog we are. That’s why the Iranians have an external operations unit that manages terrorist attacks around the world—to make their adversaries go weak in the knees. The Islamic Republic is not merely an expansionist regime, but a predatory one as well, as is evidenced by its campaigns in Syria and Iraq. They recognize, correctly, that the United States lost, which means that they won.
However, this is the flip-side: The Iranians are not capable of shouldering the weight that Obama wants them to carry. Just like America’s traditional allies, Iran is limited in its ability to project power. And what we’re seeing in Iraq right now is Tehran coming up against its natural barriers.
Since the U.S.-led coalition’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, it has become increasingly clear that the bedrock issue in the Middle East isn’t the Israeli occupation of anything, but sectarianism. Iran, a Persian and Shiite power, is on the wrong side of the regional divide. As the regional majority, Arab Sunnis outnumber the Shia by something like 5 to 1, when most military strategists argue that a 3-to-1 ratio in the field almost always proves decisive. To date, Iran has been able to manage their various regional portfolios, in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, by convincing Arab Shiites to die for Persian causes. And yet the region-wide conflict is taxing the available troops in all three theaters and stretching Iran’s supply lines thin. ISIS’s blitzkrieg through northern Iraq may be a sign of things to come.
Thanks in part to the Obama Administration, Iran the last six years has enjoyed a triumphalist moment, believing that it has finally overturned thousands of years of Middle East history, with the Persians and the Shiites victorious at last over their historical enemies. But that moment—like America’s own post-Cold War moment of euphoria—appears to be at an end. The American interest in the Middle East now depends on Iran breaking before Obama does.
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2) Feds punish Redskins owner for use of team name
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. PatentOffice ruled Wednesday that the Washington Redskins nickname is "disparaging of Native Americans" and that the team's federal trademarks for the name must be canceled.
The 2-1 ruling comes after a campaign to change the name has gained momentum over the past year. The team doesn't immediately lose trademark protection and is allowed to retain it during an appeal.
Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has refused to change the team's name, citing tradition, but there has been growing pressure including statements in recent months from President Barack Obama, lawmakers of both parties and civil rights groups.
The decision means that the team can continue to use the Redskins name, but it would lose a significant portion of its ability to protect its financial interests. If others printed the name on sweatshirts, apparel, or other team material, it becomes more difficult to go after people who use it without permission.
The decision by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board is similar to one it issued in 1999. That ruling was overturned in 2003 in large part on a technicality after the courts decided that the plaintiffs were too old and should have filed their complaint soon after the Redskins registered their nickname in 1967.
The new case was launched in 2006 by a younger group of Native Americans, and was heard by the board in March of last year.
The group argued that the Redskins should lose their federal trademark protection based on a law that prohibits registered names that are disparaging, scandalous, contemptuous or disreputable.
By Author(s): Oded Eran , Yoel Guzansky
Source: INSS Insight No. 560.
Source: INSS Insight No. 560.
The fall of major Iraqi cities to Sunni extremists belonging to the Sunni group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) may well have implications beyond the borders of Iraq. The evolution toward the dissolution of the country, which began following the US invasion in 2003 and the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, will intensify. The independent Kurdish region is an established fact, recognized by most of the actors in the region. If the Sunni takeover of central Iraq is not stopped, it could lead to the establishment of a semi-independent Sunni area, with southern Iraq falling easily into the hands of Iran. In such a situation, Iraq would become an exporter of terror, with the various groups that operate there exploiting Syria’s weakness to expand their operations in the Middle East.
Checkpoint in Iraq's northern Saladin province targeted by two suicide bombings, June 9, 2014 (AFP/Getty Images)
Checkpoint in Iraq's northern Saladin province targeted by two suicide bombings, June 9, 2014 (AFP/Getty Images)
All of Iraq’s neighbors, as well as the United States, have cause for major worry about the immediate and long term implications of the recent developments. The weakening of the central Iraqi government’s hold on the various parts of the country may serve Iran’s interest in extending its influence and potentially create an Iranian-controlled land link with Syria and Hizbollah. However, this victory by Sunnis, who did not rely on Iranian aid, will not be seen as an achievement in Tehran. Indeed the fall of important Shiite cities such as Najaf and Karbala into ISIS hands would be an Iranian nightmare.
Turkey will also view the developments in Iraq with concern. The terrorist takeover of areas near its borders increases its fear that a security problem will be created to the south, extending over parts of Syria and Iraq, and that situations could develop that would force Ankara to take military action, a move it has avoided until now. Turkey, with its Sunni Muslim character, will be forced to monitor the movement into its territory of elements identified with ISIS.
Jordan, which has already been flooded with over one million Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war, is also anxiously watching the developments in Iraq. The war in Iraq in 2003 prompted more than half a million Iraqi citizens to cross the border into Jordan. While some returned to Iraq within a few years, the Iraqi diaspora in Jordan still numbers some quarter of a million. It will undoubtedly grow soon, given the mass exodus that has already begun from areas conquered by ISIS. However, this is only part of the anxiety in Amman. Jordan’s borders with Syria and Iraq are creating heavy pressure on the Jordanian army and security forces. Even if the Iraqi refugees use only Karama, the sole Iraqi-Jordanian border crossing, and the Syrian refugees use Ramtha and Jabir, the crossings on the border with Syria, and do not attempt to cross illegally, Jordan’s security forces will find it difficult to block entirely the infiltration of sleeper cells and operatives into the kingdom. Indeed, the border crossing with Iraq is in al-Anbar Province, where ISIS has had considerable success since early 2014. Thus far, the government in Jordan has successfully coped with the risks stemming from domestic, political, and economic problems, but the developments in Syria and Iraq could alter the internal balance that has been maintained until now.
The Gulf states will also view with concern the deterioration of the situation in Iraq and the territorial entrenchment of radical organizations that lack any commitment to the conservative regimes, despite their Sunni affiliation. The weakening of the basically Shiite central government in Baghdad, which will allow greater freedom of action for sub-state terror organizations in the northern part of the Gulf, cannot but be viewed with concern in the Gulf states, which are already distressed by the diminished US interest in the region. It is too early to assess the ramifications of the ISIS seizure of major oil refineries in Iraq; over time this may impact on Iraq’s ability to export oil, and in turn, on the stability of energy prices.
Paradoxically, a coalition of sorts has formed comprising countries that have an interest in nipping the ISIS territorial entrenchment in the bud. In Iraq itself, the Kurdish military force, the Peshmerga, has begun to cooperate with the Iraqi army in order to repel the advance of ISIS forces. The immediate question confronting the United States concerns the arming of the Iraqi military. That vast quantities of weapons that have fallen into ISIS hands in recent days, much of it of American origin, underscores the risk inherent in arming the Iraqi army or the “favorable” rebels in Syria with advanced weaponry.
In his May 28, 2014 speech at West Point, President Obama addressed at length the question of fighting terrorism that is not “from a centralized al-Qaeda leadership,” but from “decentralized al-Qaeda affiliates and extremists.” Although Obama did not reject the possibility of unilateral US action if the security of US allies is endangered, he intimated that in a case such as that developing in Iraq, he would prefer to act in partnership with others. ISIS was discussed extensively in the speech by US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Anne W. Patterson, at the US-Islamic World Forum in Qatar on June 9., 2014. Patterson stated, “I believe we can do much together to contain and roll back the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s [i.e., ISIS} aspirations to create a terrorist state in western Iraq and eastern Syria.” She added that “the United States and the countries of the region need to work in concert – and overcome some differences – to develop effective policies and durable solutions to this dangerous threat.”
While the United States will need to take the leading role, it must first take some decisions regarding the logic of providing the Iraqi army with advanced weaponry, given the collapse of Iraqi army units that were facing forces equipped with inferior weapons. The risk that advanced weapons will fall into the hands of irregular forces and be used immediately against the central government in Baghdad cannot be ignored. A different but no less difficult question concerns Iran and the new situation in Iraq. Iran could attempt to sabotage a joint effort if it is not involved in any way and sees itself as deserving compensation in the nuclear realm, or at least an easing of the sanctions. Yet involving Iran, regardless of its conduct in Syria and its close cooperation with Hizbollah, appears impossible, and instead, dealing with Iran solely in the context of Iraq is highly problematic. An interesting question is whether this issue arose in the recent bilateral talks between the United States and Iran or whether these talks dwelled only on the nuclear issue. The attitude of the Gulf states on this issue is also unclear, even though they may see the Iraqi issue as another opportunity to test the possibility of turning over a new leaf in their relations with Iran.
The achievements by ISIS are a milestone in the history of the Middle East, even though they are not completely unprecedented. Hizbollah’s success in becoming a leading political force in Lebanon and the Hamas takeover in the Gaza Strip are important forerunners. The danger that this will become a permanent situation is clear to all of those directly involved, including the United States. Therefore, ISIS may see its achievements become something of a Pyrrhic victory: If the states in the region, under the leadership of the United States, mobilize for the fight against ISIS, even its most zealous fighters will have difficulty withstanding what they will face in the campaign, both in the quality of the weapons and the steps that will be used to cut off the organization’s supply routes.
Israel naturally has great interest in the success of the struggle against ISIS entrenchment in any area whatsoever in the Middle East. Even if the group’s efforts are not directed against Israel at this point, there is no doubt of the ISIS strategic objectives, and any territorial or other entrenchment by ISIS is a potential security threat to Israel.
2b) Advocacy group highlights claims of Obama administration secrecy
A small-business advocacy group has released a report citing a dozen examples it says support claims about the Obama administration’s record of “secrecy and evasion,” despite the president pledging to run the “most transparent administration in history.”
The report, released by the Center for Regulatory Solutions, raises transparency concerns related to ObamaCare and focuses in large part on the Environmental Protection Agency, which is cited three times in the report.
“Obama has overseen a federal bureaucracy that is hostile to openness and public participation,” said the group, part of the Center for Regulatory Solutions. “Examples of secrecy, evasion and downright obstruction abound.”
The most recent EPA incident cited was the agency’s June 2 announcement of a plan to cut carbon pollution from power plants.
News agencies said federal officials trying to help reporters understand the complicated, proposed plan could not be quoted during a briefing, despite the agency saying the briefing would be “on the record.”
“The opaque process infuriated” reporters, said the authors of the six-page report.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
One of the other two issues related to the EPA was its release of a “Social Cost of Carbon” report without saying which federal agencies and officials helped create the new estimates and declining to give Congress scientific data on proposed new standards on ozone air quality, according to the report.
The largest issue appears to be the administration’s handling of Freedom of Information Act requests, according to the report.
The administration last year cited “national security” to withhold information under the Act 8,496 times -- a 57 percent increase from a year earlier and more than double Obama’s first year in office, The Associated Press reported.
The wire service report also found the administration was “more than ever” denying FOIA requests: 36 percent of requests made in 2013 were censored or fully denied. On 196,034 other occasions the government couldn’t find records, the requesting party wouldn’t pay to print copies or the government determined the request was “unreasonable or improper,” the wire service found.
“I'm concerned the growing trend toward relying upon FOIA exemptions to withhold large swaths of government information is hindering the public's right to know,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “If you screw up in government, just mark it top secret.”
On ObamaCare, the administration has “either refused or simply been unable to provide meaningful, accessible data that tracks spending on … health care exchanges, the group said.
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3) Jordan Could Be the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's Next Target
Iraqi tribesmen gather in Baghdad to show their readiness to join Iraqi security forces in the fight against militants on June 16. (Photo credit should read AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, buoyed by its recent successes in Iraq, wants to expand its regional reach. Reports that Iraq has withdrawn forces from western towns close to its 180-kilometer (110-mile) border with Jordan have left Amman feeling vulnerable, and the Hashemite kingdom, certainly a target of interest for the jihadist movement, has deployed additional security personnel along the border.
However, taking on Jordan would be tough for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The group has the ability to stage terrorist attacks in the country, but significant constraints will prevent it from operating on the levels seen in Iraq and Syria.
Analysis
The June 15 edition of the Jordan Times reported that Amman had beefed up security along its border with Iraq amid fears that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant is inching toward the kingdom. Quoting unnamed Islamist sources, the report added that the jihadist group had established a branch within the kingdom as part of its plans to create a regional emirate.
The militant group's intent to expand into Jordan follows the region's geopolitical logic. After its push into Iraq, and already controlling significant swathes of Syrian territory, the jihadist group can try to push into the Hashemite kingdom from two directions. Jordan is the only opening available to Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant -- the group cannot move north into Turkey, nor could it move southwest into Lebanon. Even in Jordan, though, the group faces considerable challenges.
For starters, the Jordanian regime is far more stable than Syria or Iraq, and its security forces have proved to be quite effective. Furthermore, Jordan has strong backing from the United States and Saudi Arabia, especially since the kingdom became a critical staging ground for support to Syrian rebels. Washington and Riyadh can extend financial, intelligence and military assistance to Amman. But Jordan is also a key sanctuary for rebels, and this aids the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's cause.
Jordan has long had a substantial Salafist and jihadist presence. Since the start of the civil war in Syria, jihadists have moved frequently across the Jordan-Syria border. Amman has tried to crack down on this cross-border traffic, but it has not brought it to a stop.
Jordan is the native country of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the slain founder of the organization that later became the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. However, the kingdom's jihadist landscape is currently dominated by forces that oppose the group and are aligned with al Qaeda and its Syrian ally, Jabhat al-Nusra. Though the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant has its own supporters in Jordan, the best-known jihadist ideologues in the country -- people such as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Abu Qatada -- have criticized the group, especially its revolt against al Qaeda prime, creating dissension within jihadist ranks in Syria.
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's jihadist opponents are dismayed by what they see as the group's high-risk maneuvers, such as its mass killings of Shia and its insistence on imposing austere Islamist laws in the areas it controls, actions that risk alienating locals in a given country. In September, al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri issued guidance specifically addressing the issue, calling on jihadist fighters to refrain from fighting sects, such as Shia, Ismailis, Qadianis and Sufis, unless elements from those sects begin the fight. He similarly called for noninterference with Christian, Sikh and Hindu communities living in Muslim lands. He also ordered jihadists not to target noncombatant women and children or fellow Muslims via explosions, killings, kidnappings or destruction of property.
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant openly rejected this call. The group's predecessor, al Qaeda in Iraq, despite frictions with Jordan-based jihadists, was able to stage attacks in the country, including suicide bombings in 2005 that targeted three Western hotels in Amman, and the 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley. Now that the group's capabilities have dramatically expanded, it can certainly carry out attacks in the kingdom if it chooses to do so. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant will have to assess its current position, especially in light of its push into Iraq, and decide whether it is in its interest to quickly begin operations in Jordan, or whether it should wait until it has consolidated itself in Iraq and weathered the counteroffensive from Shia and Kurds there.
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant certainly will not want to alienate many of its Iraqi Sunni partners who have sanctuary in Jordan. Sunni tribal forces in Iraq would prefer that the group focus on that country and desist from any action in Jordan that could trigger a strong reaction from Amman. It is unclear how the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant will proceed. The key thing to bear in mind is that while it can carry out terrorist attacks in Jordan, there are too many constraints for the group to act in Jordan as it has in Syria and Iraq.
3a) Middle East holds few attractive options for Obama
By Victor Davis Hanson
Two and a half years ago, the U.S. pulled every soldier out of a mostly quiet Iraq . In the void, formerly al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists calling themselves "The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria " are now tearing apart the country, leaving medieval savagery in their wake.
Obama partisans are blaming the Bush administration for going into Iraq in the first place. But critics counter that Obama wanted out of Iraq before the 2012 election at all costs. The result of that reckless skedaddle is that we have thrown away the hard work of the 2007-2008 surge that finally broke the back of both al-Qaeda and Iranian-backed Shiite terrorists.
Almost everyone faults Nouri al-Maliki , the ingrate Shiite prime minister of Iraq , who has serially trashed the American benefactors who liberated his country from Saddam Hussein's genocidal regime. Maliki has sabotaged every effort to bring Shiites and Sunnis tougher. Now he is desperate for American help to save his scalp. Iran may end up intervening, asIraq is splitting into Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni warring states.
President Obama has announced that we will pull all troops out of Afghanistan in 2016. ButAfghanistan is even less stable now than Iraq was when we left. We can assume what Kabul will look like when the last American leaves.
Most believe that Libya is now worse off after the U.S. and European bombing of the Muammar Gaddafi regime that led to its removal and subsequent sectarian fighting. The U.S. was unwilling to send troops openly to restore order. The subsequent rise of al-Qaeda terrorists led to the destruction of the American consulate in Benghazi and the death of our ambassador and three other Americans.
Al-Qaeda affiliates have slowly taken over the resistance to the barbaric regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad . Syria is now a wasteland like Libya -- and perhaps soon most of the Middle East . Obama threatened to intervene, issued red-line threats, backed off, and then asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for face-saving help.
There is a common theme to the repeated messes in the Middle East . Invading countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq to topple genocidal anti-American tyrants doesn't result in long-term advantages unless there are years of American postwar occupation -- which is costly and deeply unpopular with voters.
Letting Middle East factions kill each other off -- and kill tens of thousands of innocents in their way -- poses a humanitarian disaster and can lead to the sort of chaotic badlands that allowed Osama bin Laden and his gangsters to plan attacks on the U.S.
Just bombing and leaving is not always that much better. A chaotic Libya is now worse than under Gaddafi.
Whichever bad choice the Obama administration prefers, it should at least level with the American people. Every postwar occupation in our history has dealt with unappreciative and unstable allies such as Maliki -- from difficult South Korean strongmen of the 1950s and 1960s to Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan . Pulling completely out of a mostly quiet Iraq just because we had to work with unsavory characters made no sense.
Airbrushing the Middle East or the war on terror also leads nowhere. The administration can create mythologies about Islamic history, as in Obama's unfortunate Cairo speech. It can bow to sheiks, commit NASA to Muslim outreach, emphasize the Muslim roots of Obama's father's family, invent euphemisms for the war against radical Islam, and dub the Muslim Brotherhood "largely secular."
The result will still be that Middle Eastern factions hate us. Polls reveal that Obama is as unpopular in the Middle East as George W. Bush was.
The Middle East is the Middle East not because America intervenes or does not intervene, or reaches out or stays out, or imports oil or cuts back its purchases.
Instead, Middle Eastern violence and instability are homegrown. They result from a complex brew of tribalism, religious fundamentalism and intolerance, sexual apartheid, anti-Semitism, authoritarianism and statism -- all made worse by huge oil revenues and its key strategic location.
Americans have a choice. They can learn to keep clear of these quagmires and accept that hundreds of thousands will frequently die in the Middle East -- and occasionally some Americans as well. Or, if we tire of watching the violence and intervene after a 9/11-like attack, we should brace for a bloody mess that will take years of unpopular occupation.
So for now we will blame each other for the ensuing savagery and vow to let the Middle East be the Middle East -- at least until the next time Islamic terrorists slaughter our diplomats, blow up an embassy, take down an airplane or topple a New York skyscraper.
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4) The High Price of Obama Fatigue
The IRS isn't Watergate; it's worse than Watergate.
By Daniel Henninger
With 2½ years left in the Obama presidency, it is at least an open question what will be left of it by December 2016. Or us.
In this week's Wall Street Journal-NBC poll, conducted as the disintegration of Iraq began, Mr. Obama's approval rating has fallen to 41% and his handling of foreign policy to 37%.
Respondents to this poll know what is going on in the world—Ukraine destabilized, Iraq disintegrating, their economy eternally recovering.
Mr. Obama's world this week consisted of flying to the University of California-Irvine to give a speech about a) himself (check the text if you doubt it) and b) climate change. On Wednesday he was in New York City for a midtown fundraiser, an LGBT fundraiser and a third, $32,000 per person fundraiser at the home of Vogue editor Anna Wintour.
The Hill newspaper ran a piece earlier this week wondering if Mr. Obama is "done with Washington." Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist, says, "He's never really made it a secret he's not a fan of this place." Or Syria. Or Ukraine. Or Iraq.
President Barack Obama stands alone in the Green Room Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images
The defenders of the Obama presidency—which increasingly is becoming a project separate from the person—argue that GOP obstruction thwarted the president's agenda. If the Republicans were the rank partisans of Democratic myth, Eric Cantor would still be Majority Leader and Mississippi's Sen. Thad Cochran would be waltzing to his seventh term.
As to the American people now pushing his approval below 40%, Barack Obama entered office with more good will than any president since John F. Kennedy. If the Obama presidency has run out of aerobic capacity 2½ years from the finish line, it is because of Mr. Obama's own decisions. He did this to himself.
If there's one Obama foreign-policy decision that sticks in anyone's mind it is the "red line" in Syria. It was Mr. Obama's decision last September, at Vladimir Putin's invitation, to step back from his own criteria for punishing Syria's Bashar Assad if he used chemical weapons against his own people. The voters now tanking Mr. Obama's foreign affairs number don't think it's just random bad luck that Russian tanks ended up in Ukraine and some al Qaeda group they've never heard of took over half of Iraq in two days. The world is slipping beyond President Obama's control, or interest. From here on out, it—and we—are in God's hands.
Meanwhile, the Obama domestic presidency is entering its Lois Lerner phase. The Internal Revenue Service says it lost Ms. Lerner's hard drive with emails relevant to its audits of numerous conservative citizen groups. Actually, the IRS says Lois herself lost them because the emails were on her own PC.
Then Tuesday, House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa said the IRS also lost similarly relevant emails from six other IRS employees. At a hearing Friday, he will ask IRS Commissioner John Koskinen to explain the AWOL emails.
Barack Obama created Darrell Issa.
On Jan. 27, 2010, Mr. Obama used his State of the Union speech to explicitly criticize the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, seated in front of him, for their campaign-finance ruling in Citizens United v. FEC.
The forces Mr. Obama put in motion with this attack were described in a seminal piecefor this newspaper by former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith—"Connecting the Dots in the IRS Scandal." Through 2012, a succession of Democratic senators urged the IRS to investigate 501(c)(4) nonprofit political groups. Mr. Obama himself in a March 2010 radio address spoke of "shadowy groups with harmless sounding names" that threaten "our democracy."
Here's a partial list of the American place names where the "tea party" groups audited by the IRS were organized: Franklin, Tenn.; Livonia, Mich.; Lucas, Texas; Middletown, Del.; Fishersville, Va.; Jackson, N.J.; Redding, Calif.; Chandler, Ariz.; Laurens, S.C.; Woodstown, N.J.; Wetumpka, Ala.; Kahului, Hawaii; Sidney, Ohio; Newalla, Okla.
He's right, these people do live most of their lives in the shadow of daily American life, out of the public eye. Still, they considered themselves to be very much inside "our democracy." Then the IRS asked them for the names of their donors, what they talked about, political affiliations.
The IRS tea-party audit story isn't Watergate; it's worse than Watergate.
The Watergate break-in was the professionals of the party in power going after the party professionals of the party out of power. The IRS scandal is the party in power going after the most average Americans imaginable.
They didn't need to do this. The Obama campaign machine was a wonder, perfecting the uses of social media in 2008 and 2012. But the Democrats were so crazed in 2010 byCitizens United, so convinced that anyone's new political money might bust their hold on power, that they sicced the most feared agency in government on people who disagreed with them.
Barack Obama wanted this job. He didn't want it to come with Ukraine, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or Darrell Issa. But it does.
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5) AMERICA: Imagine the world without her
I highly recommend the new Dinesh D'Souza salvo at truth, optimism and the melioration of the endless lies proffered by the leftatariat who preach in the nation's wholly-owned radicalized college campii (my version of the plural form -- don't bother with Webster's or Wiktionary).
He goes into the 5 basic lies of America's birth promoted and promulgated by Saul Alinsky, author of Reveille for Radicals (as well as its more famous successor, Rules for Radicals), the socialist sleaze who was a mentor to Hillary, as well as the guiding muck/light for the current occupant of the Oval Office. Alinsky does not emerge as a nice person, nor a person a patriot could ever follow.
D'Souza frames the film in the Revolutionary War, and instead of Gen. Washington leading his men into victory against the Redcoats, Washington is shot by a sniper, falls to the ground, and his men surrender. America is not to be.
The Mumbai-born D'Souza, who came here when he was 17, carefully interviews the likes of acidulous America-hater, anti-Zionist cynic Noam Chomsky, captures some of the ugly in another Obama mentor, rapist and muni-bomber William Ayers, one of the ghost-writers of Obama's better "autobiography" (the less-well-written autobio was penned by someone lesser than Ayers, perhaps Obama himself; perhaps not).
It is hard to sit through the first 20 minutes of this merciful film, since it is all chunked up with these reprehensible haters of the US for the nonce. But D'Souza is fair, giving these sordid types leeway to put forth their insidious and untrue misappropriations of non-history.
Relief comes after these professorial historical histrionics are presented. The film carefully goes point for point, shredding the lies and distortions massaged by the adipose-friendly, hirsute Michael Moore and "historians" on major leftard campuses.
Dinesh made three predictions before the 2012 election: If Obama won, the national debt would double. Our friends and enemies would be reversed because of Obama's peculiar handling of both, and the country would be immensely poorer.
All three have spookily come to pass.
I noted to Director/Writer D'Souza that his arrest on trumped-up charges was a merit badge of honor somewhat analogous to being on the Nixon's Enemies List back in the 70s. He laughed self-deprecatingly and explained that he goes from campus to campus, encountering klatches of protest signs and students out of the know. "I am sorry for you, " he told us he smiles at these puny protesting socialists-in-training. "Your understanding of the history of this country is so misinformed. And so limited."
He regards these peppery encounters as "fun," he says.
When I trundled down to the screening, I noticed aged hippies handling hand-lettered signs against involvement in Iraq, any war, or Israel. As the streets were impassable, again, as a consequence of the President's full-time fund-raising instead of doing the job he was elected to do, I was forced to share the sidewalk with these grizzled throwbacks still in Birkenstocks and sallowing braids.
The film opens July 4, Independence Day -- a nice touch -- a celebration of what is great about the country, even in the teeth of a man who is trying as hard as he can to wrest failure from the most enduringly remarkable endeavor in the history of the globe.
Closing credits are great, featuring a new-mode anthem; and opening credits resemble the great work done on "House of Cards," that Netflix stunner about DC Machiavellians.
5a) Is Hillary Clinton Imploding?
By Jonathan V. Last
Last week was a very, very bad week for Hillary Clinton.
By just about every account, her book is uninteresting and unreflective, a carefully contrived piece of positioning. Yet instead of owning that, she insisted at an event that she was "done with being really careful about what to say." And that was before uttering inanities about how "the American political system is the most difficult, even brutal, in the world ." (She might look at Egypt, for instance. Or Venezuela. Or China. Or Greece. Or Russia. Or any country where instability and chaos is the norm and the children of former presidents aren't given $600,000 sinecures from independent_"independent"?_media conglomerates.)
Then there was her Romney-esque statement about being "dead broke" after leaving the White House and her being so out of touch as to suggest that she and her husband "struggled" to "piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea's education." "You know," she said, looking for sympathy, "it was not easy." It's hard to think of a more let-them-eat-cake moment from any Democratic politician in the last 40 years. But what made the line even worse is that it was made in defense of taking exorbitant speaking fees from companies such as Goldman Sachs. You half expected her to explain, hedge funds are people, my friends!
And then there was her encounter with Terry Gross, in which Clinton couldn't handle the tough questions ... from NPR.
If you were a Democrat or a Hillary booster, the NPR fiasco was probably even more dispiriting than her Romney impersonation, for two reasons. The first is that it might be a sign that the revolution is ready to continue eating its young. Perhaps it's the case that while Barack Obama gets a pass on gay marriage positions he held way back in 2012, Hillary Clinton will not get a pass on those same positions. Maybe the left has collectively decided that it needs to make an example out of someone on their side as they begin the long, twilight struggle to upend society in pursuit of the new Most Pressing Human Rights Cause of Our Time. (That would be transgender rights. Get with the program.)
But even if the left ultimately forgives Clinton for being on the wrong side of herstory, what was shocking about the NPR interview was that Clinton has had two years to figure out how to answer the gay marriage question. And yet she couldn't do it. For a prospective presidential candidate, that's problematic. For a candidate who's scheduled for a coronation, rather than a primary, it's political malpractice.
Yet even that wasn't Hillary's worst problem last week. No, the worst came during a BBC interview when she claimed that the Russian "reset button" was a "brilliant stroke." You can go and read the full transcript here, but let me give you the 30-second political ad version: "No I think it was a brilliant stroke which in retrospect it appears even more so, because look at what we accomplished... . He invaded another country, so yes, but while we had that moment, we seized it."
To understand the weakness of Hillary Clinton's position, you need to understand her appeal as a candidate. She has no identifiable political legacy, no issue or set of positions that mark her ground. Instead, she is a symbol, as Ross Douthat put it last week, which seeks to unite the Democratic working-class (her base in 2008) with the identity-politics impulses that drive the core Obama voters. She is, in that way, a continuation of the Obama appeal, but without any of the political or policy baggage from the Obama administration. In fact, she's one of the few Democrats who can run without any firm attachment to Obama's tri-partite political legacy of Obamacare, high unemployment, and a stagnant economy. Clinton can be Obama's heir, but it's hard to pin any of those problems on her.
The only part of Obama's legacy that will stick to Clinton is his foreign policy.
For four years, that seemed like a great arrangement. But suddenly, over the last year, it's begun to look quite perilous. Obama_perhaps you've heard this?_got bin Laden. But other than that, his foreign policy record is disastrous: Libya, Egypt, Syria, the South China Sea, Crimea, Iraq, Afghanistan. It is difficult to find a spot on the globe that is better off today than when Obama took office. And yet Obama's foreign policy is the only entry of substance on Hillary Clinton's resume right now. Which means it will carry double the weight.
For Obama, Putin and Crimea are a mid-size political problem, ranked somewhere above the Keystone pipeline. For Clinton it's an existential problem because foreign affairs are the only measures for her basic professional competence.
Think about it from the perspective of a Democratic voter: Hillary Clinton was wrong on Monica Lewinsky during the (Bill) Clinton years, wrong on gay marriage and Iraq during the Bush years, and now wrong on Putin and Syria and Egypt and the whole of American foreign policy during the Obama years. What has she ever been right on? And if you're a Democratic voter, at some point you start to wonder, Can't we do better?
I suspect that if Democrats are given a serious alternative, they may well decide that they can.
And that's before they get a look at some of the really ugly stuff, too.
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