I wrote in a memo recently that eventually Obama would be forced to do what he has accuses Israel of doing, ie. attacking terrorists, who care not about civilian deaths, will cause Americans to kill innocents.
Can Obama's personality allow him to learn a valuable lesson, ie. 'what goes around often comes around' and, if so, it can bite you and be painful.
Time will tell, it always does and I have my doubts Obama can man up to the challenge - Sorry Harvey. (See 1 and 1a below.)
China testing our metal or mettle? (See 1b below.)
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UNRWA could just as easily stand for 'The Unworkable Radical Wahabbist Agency' (See 2 below.)
and then what about Washington? (See 2a below.)
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Dick
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1) A New Kind of Terrorist Threat
There's a good reason no one is protesting Obama's bombing of Iraq.
By Peggy Noonan
The question "What should we do about ISIS?" is not the same as the question "Do we want to go back to Iraq?" One is about facing up to an extreme and immediate challenge, which we have to do. The other is about returning to an old experience, which almost no one wants to do.
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham is not just a grandiose army of freelancers and fanatics. They're something different in kind from the al Qaeda of old—more vicious, more organized and professional. George Packer in the New Yorker estimates ISIS controls 35,000 square miles of land. "The self-proclaimed Caliphate stretches from the newly conquered towns along the Syrian-Turkish border," through northern Syria, across the Iraqi border, "down to the farming towns south of Baghdad." ISIS funds its operations not like primitives but sophisticates: They sell oil and electricity and empty banks in the areas they seize. (A CNN report put their haul from the oil fields alone at $2 million a day.) They also make money from kidnappings and what they call taxation. Mr. Packer quotes a former Pentagon official: "ISIS now controls a volume of resources and territory unmatched in the history of extremist organizations."
They are something new and different in the Mideast drama. They ably take left-behind American and Russian armored vehicles and weapons. They are savage: Al Qaeda once threw them out for brutality and bloodlust. "Extreme Violence Lies in Isis DNA," is how the Financial Times pithily put it. They have a talent for war and draw fighters from throughout the world, particularly young men from the culturally fractured and materialist West. Those young men, desperate to belong to something, to be among men on a mission, to believe in something bigger and higher than their sad selves, are ripe for jihadist recruitment. Many hundreds of ISIS fighters are said to hold U.S., British or German passports, which will make it easier for ISIS to come here, as they have promised to do. ISIS has a social-media presence that would be the envy of Josef Goebbels : They taunt the West, promise mayhem, post pictures of their murdered victims and videos of beheadings. They are driven not solely by hatred for America and the West but by a desire to create their own trans-Arab state. The caliphate will be fundamentalist and totalitarian, Shariah with all its brute simplicities.
Fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham parade through Tel Abyad, a Syrian town near the border with Turkey, Jan. 2. Reuters
America this week learned of their beheading an American journalist, James Foley. Before that there were beheadings of Christians and other infidels. ISIS is in fact helping to depopulate the Mideast of Christians, a fact so shocking people still can't bring themselves to believe it.
The U.S. cannot be certain of ISIS' immediate strategic plans. Perhaps they will concentrate on holding the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It is possible they will widen their war. In an audio statement in January the ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, referred to America while speaking to ISIS fighters. "Soon we'll be in direct confrontation," he said. "So watch out for us, for we are with you, watching." Those associated with ISIS have promised to raise their black flag over the White House.
Writers and politicians have for years made points by quoting lines from "The Godfather." ISIS keeps making me think of a line from "Goodfellas." A gambler is beaten to a pulp and realizes the mob is going to kill him if he doesn't come up with the money. He calls a relative and says through broken teeth: "These guys mean business." ISIS means business.
America is said to be war-weary. I think it's more like war-leery, or war-wary, which a great nation should be, especially after two wars, both bungled in their execution and their ending.
But now, after months of graphic violence and crude propaganda, and after Foley's beheading, the nature, threat and intentions of ISIS have become clear. This week the president sent bombers. There were no demonstrations in protest. Even the pope didn't protest. To stop violent aggressors, Francis noted when asked about the U.S. bombings, is "licit." He did not explicitly support bombing, but noted the stopping of groups such as ISIS was justifiable.
The good thing, the comfort, is that as each day passes the civilized world, as we used to say, gets a closer, clearer look at who these people are.
One of my fears in the early years of the Iraq war was that if it proved to be the wrong war—if no weapons of mass destruction were found, if sustained unrest showed Saddam Hussein was the garbage-pail lid who kept the garbage of his nation from spilling out—it would mean that at some time in the future when America really needed to fight and had to fight, she would not. I feared the war's supporters would be seen to have cried wolf, and someday there would be a wolf and no one would listen. Now there is a wolf.
We tell ourselves that we do not want to go back to Iraq, and we don't—all the polls show this. But facing up to what ISIS is and what it plans to do is not returning to Iraq in that we are not talking about nation-building, quixotic exercises in democracy-bringing, or underwriting governments ruled by incompetents. We are talking about other things.
The president was rhetorically serious this week, after too long dismissing ISIS as the "junior varsity." This time he called them a "cancer" that must be cut out. He said they have "rampaged across cities and villages, killing innocent, unarmed civilians in cowardly acts of violence. . . . They have murdered Muslims—both Sunni and Shia—by the thousands. They target Christians and religious minorities, driving them from their homes, murdering them when they can for no other reason than they practice a different religion."
All this is true.
Then, alas, looking like an unserious man, like one who doesn't know the import even of his own words, he went golfing. It is obvious he doesn't care what people think anymore, but soon he will return to Washington where there is much he can do.
Such as:
Continue bombing ISIS where potentially efficacious, as heavily and for as long as needed. This week's bombing forced them to give up the dam they'd seized at Mosul, an act that left ISIS looking, for the first time in its history, reduced and stoppable. Go to Congress for authorization of force, showing the world we have gained at least some semblance of unity. Give the Kurds, our actual friends, every kind of help they need, from military to material. Use the threat of ISIS to forge new bonds with allies and possible allies, such as the leaders of nearby countries that are immediately threatened. Go to the U.N., pound the table, ask for the world's help. Let them humiliate themselves by doing nothing if that's what they choose. At least it will be clarifying.
And be prepared, to the degree possible, for a hit or hits on American soil or that of our long-standing allies. ISIS says it's coming. So far they've done pretty much everything they said they'd do.
-1a) U.S Considers Taking Fight Against Islamic State Into Syria
Pressure is mounting on President Barack Obama to take the fight against the Islamic State into Syria, with top Republicans calling for the move on Friday after days of attacks on the militants in Iraq and the beheading of American journalist James Foley this week.
"I don't see how we can defeat ISIS without going into Syria," New York Rep. Peter King, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN. "I believe in massive airstrikes.
"This is not about Syria. This is not about Iraq," King added. "It's about our national security. The president has the obligation, if he is serious about going after ISIS, to go into Syria."
Florida Rep. Ilena Ros-Lehtinen later told CNN that "I believe that the president should do that.
"He should have done it when he first announced it when he said Assad has crossed a red line in the use of chemical weapons," she added, referring to Obama's speech in June 2013 when it was confirmed that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had used the arsenal against his own people. "In fact, they used chemical weapons twice and still we did not do what we said we would do.
"It was a mistake for us not to act then," Ros-Lehtinen said. "We cannot let this cancer grow."
The GOP House members added to the rising calls for bombing ISIS in Syria after Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said that it was critical to defeating the militants.
"This is an organization that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision and which will eventually have to be defeated," Dempsey said at a news briefing on Thursday with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. "Can they be defeated without addressing that part of their organization which resides in Syria? The answer is no."
The White House signaled on Friday that taking the fight against ISIS into Syria is an option, as Obama nears the end of his two-week vacation on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. The option gained more credence after ISIS posted its video this week showing Foley's brutal execution and threats to kill a second American journalist, Steve Sotloff.
"We will do what's necessary to protect Americans and see that justice is done for what we saw with the barbaric killing of Jim Foley," White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said on Friday. "So we're actively considering what's going to be necessary to deal with that threat, and we're not going to be restricted by borders."
The U.S. has so far conducted slightly more than 90 airstrikes in Iraq to protect the Iraqi Yazidi religious minority and attack Islamic State positions around the Mosul Dam. Tens of thousands of Yazidis have fled their homelands since ISIS began seizing them last month.
The Pentagon said on Friday that U.S. warplanes made three more airstrikes against Islamic State targets near the Mosul Dam, including a machine gun position that was firing on Iraqi forces.
Extending the fight into Syria, however, would allow opportunities for disrupting the Islamic State's supply lines.
Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain said this week that ISIS fighters have moved military equipment seized in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul into Syria and that they hold enclaves in Syrian territory that have been identified. The heavy artillery was left in Baghdad after the U.S. pulled out of Iraq in 2011.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a prospective 2016 presidential candidate, said on Friday that attacking ISIS supply lines, command and control centers, and economic assets inside Syria was "at the crux of the decision" for Obama.
The risk of "getting sucked into a new war" is outweighed, Rubio said, by the risk of inaction.
A move into Syria, even only with air strikes, would be a reversal for Obama. He stepped back from a threat to launch airstrikes in Syria a year ago in response to a chemical weapons attack by Assad.
Obama has many times rejected greater involvement in the three-year-old Syrian civil war over the past year out of concern about getting entangled in a conflict with no clear positive outcome for the United States.
But officials say the situation now is different because Islamic State militants represent a direct threat to Americans and American interests. Hagel said underscored the importance of preventing ISIS from regrouping — even partly into Syria — and launching renewed attacks.
The Islamic State is also known as ISIL.
"The president, the chairman and I are all very clear-eyed about the challenges ahead," Hagel said. "We are pursuing a long-term strategy against ISIL because ISIL clearly poses a long-term threat. We should expect ISIL to regroup and stage new offenses."
Not going into Syria, essentially, puts the U.S. "back to where you were," said Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria who quit in February in disillusionment over Obama's unwillingness to arm moderate Syrian rebels in their battle against Assad.
"I don't see how you can contain the Islamic State over the medium term if you don't address their base of operations in Syria," he said.
U.S. Special Forces have already had one direct ground battle with Islamic State militants in Syria. That was during the nighttime helicopter mission during the July Fourth Weekend when two dozen Delta Force commandos sought to rescue Foley, Sotloff, and several other Americans.
A number of militants were killed in the firefight, the White House said this week — and one U.S. soldier was wounded. The hostages were not at the location.
More broadly, however, the U.S. strong consideration of going into Syria reflects a more serious approach to ISIS than six months ago, when Obama told New Yorker magazine that they were the "JV team."
The term is short for "junior varsity" — meaning that they are not the best players on the field.
King slammed Obama for the reference in the CNN interview.
"The president was wrong when he called them 'junior varsity.' This was no secret in the intelligence community," he said. "This was no secret — and the president seemed content in saying that al-Qaida was defeated and that, basically, this was all behind us.
"I actually believe that, now, ISIS is more powerful now and more deadly than al-Qaida was on Sept. 11," King said.
1a) Chinese Fighter 'Intercepts' US Jet, Performs Acrobatics
The United States charged on Friday that a Chinese fighter pilot conducted a "dangerous intercept" of a Navy patrol plane in international air space this week, flying a few yards from the U.S. jet and performing acrobatic maneuvers around it.
The United States charged on Friday that a Chinese fighter pilot conducted a "dangerous intercept" of a Navy patrol plane in international air space this week, flying a few yards from the U.S. jet and performing acrobatic maneuvers around it.
Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the United States lodged a formal diplomatic protest with Beijing over the incident, which took place on Tuesday 135 miles east of Hainan Island, site of a sensitive Chinese submarine base.
Kirby said the Chinese fighter jet made several passes at the P-8 Poseidon anti-submarine and reconnaissance plane, crossing over and under it. At one point, the jet flew wingtip-to-wingtip about 10 yards from the Poseidon, then performed a barrel roll over the top of it, he said.
"The Chinese jet also passed the nose of the P-8 at 90 degrees with its belly toward the P-8 Poseidon, we believe to make a point of showing its weapons load," Kirby said.
"This kind of behavior not only is unprofessional, it's unsafe," he said. "And it is certainly not in keeping with the kind of military-to-military ... relations that we'd like to have with China."
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2) UNRWA is a millstone around Gaza's neck
The billions spent by UNRWA on aid activities could have been used to build an economy.
Ever since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, the economy there has been based on two main "export" industries: humanitarian aid and providing terrorism services. In order to continue financing its activity, Hamas needs a round of fighting with Israel every few years, at the end of which it can market its military "victory" to the financers of terrorism and the misery of its people to providers of humanitarian aid worldwide.
A waste of $1 billion
In order to change the dynamic between Israel and the Gaza Strip, the economic incentives of residents of Gaza must be changed. This concept requires a proposal by Israel for "demilitarization in exchange for reconstruction." Since this proposal also depends on Hamas's cooperation, it can be assumed that there is little chance of carrying it out.
Israel can change the incentives for residents of the Gaza Strip if it focuses its efforts on the diplomatic front eliminating the humanitarian aid mechanism and replacing it with an economic one. The main channel for humanitarian aid in Gaza is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency UNRWA.
The UNRWA budget, which is provided mainly by the US, Canada, and the European Union, amounts to $1 billion a year. Israel needs to discuss and cooperate with these donors in order to replace UNRWA's humanitarian aid mechanism by a different economic mechanism.
Rebuild the Gazan Economy
It is ridiculous that Israel evacuated the Jewish communities from the Gaza Strip and gave the Palestinians all the attributes of self-government, while the Palestinians are still defined in international discourse as refugees in need of aid.
The billions spent by UNRWA on its aid activities to date could have been used to build an economy in Gaza as a counterweight to the countries that finance terrorism. Were there enough factories and jobs in Gaza providing employment to its people in exchange for wages, the power of radical religious organizations would also wane.
UNRWA's operational mechanism has not done a thing for the residents of Gaza, nor has it provided them with a dignified way to earn a living. Over the past 50 years, UNRWA has only perpetuated the situation of the people of Gaza, their distress, and in effect, the aid system itself. UNRWA has thereby left the residents of the Gaza Strip in need of more aid, which comes from radical religious groups and terrorists.
UNRWA is perpetuating the refugee status, instead of promoting economic prosperity.
In order to create a real alternative to UNRWA, Israel will have to pay for it. It must head a coalition of donor countries and offer by itself several hundred million dollars for a new organization in place of UNRWA. The purpose of the new organization will be to develop Gaza's economy.
Money will be invested only in projects with definite civilian content. The organization will also finance construction of water, electricity, and housing infrastructure, but will focus on and support mainly the creation of jobs in sectors using civilian technology, such as agriculture and textiles.
Gas for regional peace
Israel is used to being the side that demands aid. As a country, we also have a history of raising donations and grants. Even now, in the midst of the current military campaign, we asked the US for $250 million for Iron Dome.
The cost of Operation Protective Edge and its accompanying damages is estimated at NIS 10-12 billion. It can be claimed that our own needy should take priority, and the idea of providing economic assistance to Gaza must therefore be rejected.
Getting UNRWA out of Gaza, however, is a supreme interest of Israel. Getting rid
of this organization is of security importance, for which an economic price should be paid. Therefore, from a position of strength, we should offer to pay from our state budget the money needed to eliminate UNRWA from Gaza.
The Israeli contribution to the development of Gaza could be an element in regional economic cooperation. For example, the natural buyers for our natural gas reserves are Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey.
In the regional dialogue, Israel can link its contribution to Gaza to the encouragement and enhancement of trade with its neighbors, if Israel is wise enough to link the volume of aid for Gaza to the rate of royalties its receives from exporting the gas it produces from its reserves.
The author holds a PhD in Economics, is the author of the book TOC Thinking
2a)Washington Is America's Greatest Threat
By Denis Kleinfeld
The political establishment of Washington, D.C., includes Congress, the president, the bureaucracy and the lobbyists.
It sees the public as docile fools to be duped at election time and looted at will. A criminal class that must be carefully controlled by all means. Washington is politically using a feudal system in the age of the Internet.
Polls consistently reflect that Congress is less valued to the voters than cockroaches are. The president, even to his supporters and defenders, is no longer trusted. The bureaucracies are viewed as bloated organizations, hostile to the public that supports them and unnecessary.
Lobbyists are parasites who live off this culture of corruption.
Congress asserts a right of unlimited power, blessed by the Supreme Court as the church blessed a king. Congress has little hesitation to control every aspect of life from before birth to after death. Their power of enforcement is based on the age-old ability to inflict terrible harm and violence on any who are deemed offenders. Those in power understand the usefulness of terror.
Lawyers and non-lawyers alike maintain out of tradition some amount of respect for the Supreme Court. Nonetheless, its stature is tarnished by the Court's inability to articulate in their decisions any clear principles that can be respected.
The Supreme Court follows the self-created rule of deference to the government instead of deference to constitutional personal liberties of the people. It is accepted that the Court's decisions are made on the basis of the Justices' personal politics and private agendas — flawed human beings who don black robes, but are still flawed.
It is all so terribly wrong.
The primary weapon of institutional enforcement is the income tax system. It is the most inefficient system that could possibly be devised for raising revenue to finance a government. Its complexity defies any comprehension. So-called tax experts disagree on what it means, how it should be applied or why we do not repeal it altogether. This nightmare of a tax system is maintained solely because it is the money machine that fuels re-elections, allowing the expansion of governmental power.
The government has more than a thousand federal agencies. Waste, fraud, abuse and outright theft of tax dollars are annually ignored by Congress and the administration. It is easier to just rubber stamp the unread spending bills.
The enacted budget for government's expenses vastly exceeds tax revenues. In fact, $4 of every $10 of expenditures, before supplemental spending bills, has to be borrowed. Interest on that debt is the fourth-largest expenditure after Medicare, Social Security and defense.
The government has no auditable books and records like those in the private sector must keep or go to jail. There is no recognizable financial statement. The government operates according to special rules that if used by private industry would land them behind bars.
Recently, 47 Inspectors General collectively claimed in a letter that the administration is stonewalling their respective investigations. The Government Accountability Office diplomatically prepares numerous reports of governmental operations, makes no specific accusations against anyone for consistent systemic failures and nobody in Congress acts on those reports.
Any form of Congressional oversight is a charade. The most intense of its investigations are acted out as if they are pseudo-reality shows that air season after season. There is no actual purpose other than to keep the advertising revenues — that is, the campaign contributions — coming in. Expect more investigations to be announced since more money will be needed for the upcoming election.
The United States is being undermined by its own government. Its weakness internally means it is perceived as feeble externally as well. There is not one country in the world, other than Israel, who is a true ally.
The continuation of the United States as a country based on personal liberty and a free-market economy is in jeopardy. Its greatest threat comes from its own government in Washington, D.C.
2a)Washington Is America's Greatest Threat
The political establishment of Washington, D.C., includes Congress, the president, the bureaucracy and the lobbyists.
It sees the public as docile fools to be duped at election time and looted at will. A criminal class that must be carefully controlled by all means. Washington is politically using a feudal system in the age of the Internet.
Polls consistently reflect that Congress is less valued to the voters than cockroaches are. The president, even to his supporters and defenders, is no longer trusted. The bureaucracies are viewed as bloated organizations, hostile to the public that supports them and unnecessary.
Lobbyists are parasites who live off this culture of corruption.
Congress asserts a right of unlimited power, blessed by the Supreme Court as the church blessed a king. Congress has little hesitation to control every aspect of life from before birth to after death. Their power of enforcement is based on the age-old ability to inflict terrible harm and violence on any who are deemed offenders. Those in power understand the usefulness of terror.
Lawyers and non-lawyers alike maintain out of tradition some amount of respect for the Supreme Court. Nonetheless, its stature is tarnished by the Court's inability to articulate in their decisions any clear principles that can be respected.
The Supreme Court follows the self-created rule of deference to the government instead of deference to constitutional personal liberties of the people. It is accepted that the Court's decisions are made on the basis of the Justices' personal politics and private agendas — flawed human beings who don black robes, but are still flawed.
It is all so terribly wrong.
The primary weapon of institutional enforcement is the income tax system. It is the most inefficient system that could possibly be devised for raising revenue to finance a government. Its complexity defies any comprehension. So-called tax experts disagree on what it means, how it should be applied or why we do not repeal it altogether. This nightmare of a tax system is maintained solely because it is the money machine that fuels re-elections, allowing the expansion of governmental power.
The government has more than a thousand federal agencies. Waste, fraud, abuse and outright theft of tax dollars are annually ignored by Congress and the administration. It is easier to just rubber stamp the unread spending bills.
The enacted budget for government's expenses vastly exceeds tax revenues. In fact, $4 of every $10 of expenditures, before supplemental spending bills, has to be borrowed. Interest on that debt is the fourth-largest expenditure after Medicare, Social Security and defense.
The government has no auditable books and records like those in the private sector must keep or go to jail. There is no recognizable financial statement. The government operates according to special rules that if used by private industry would land them behind bars.
Recently, 47 Inspectors General collectively claimed in a letter that the administration is stonewalling their respective investigations. The Government Accountability Office diplomatically prepares numerous reports of governmental operations, makes no specific accusations against anyone for consistent systemic failures and nobody in Congress acts on those reports.
Any form of Congressional oversight is a charade. The most intense of its investigations are acted out as if they are pseudo-reality shows that air season after season. There is no actual purpose other than to keep the advertising revenues — that is, the campaign contributions — coming in. Expect more investigations to be announced since more money will be needed for the upcoming election.
The United States is being undermined by its own government. Its weakness internally means it is perceived as feeble externally as well. There is not one country in the world, other than Israel, who is a true ally.
The continuation of the United States as a country based on personal liberty and a free-market economy is in jeopardy. Its greatest threat comes from its own government in Washington, D.C.
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