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Did Hamas accomplish its objective even though it led to much destruction and death of its citizens?
One could persuasively argu it did because Israel will now be taken to task for defending itself against future unwarranted rocket attacks.
Hamas has, seemingly, been able to turn logic on its head because hiding behind citizens, using hospitals and schools to store and fire rockets from pays.
Why? Because, as I have said, the politically correct world loves the supposed victim but , more importantly, the politically correct world is biased when it comes to Israel. Defending the poor and oppressed Palestinians wins over Israelis trying to live a normal life in a region that is abnormal, consumed by hate and certified insane.
Furthermore, presidents Carter and Obama have been effective in appealing to those with an anti-Semitic bias they hide under the moral claim of protecting the underdog. (See 1 below)
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British Dyson ad. Sometimes you just have to suck it up. http://zanylol.com/dyson.html
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This from a general officer friend and fellow memo reader. (See 2 below.)
And this is a must listen:
BILL WHITTLE ON THE NARRATIVE.......THE ORIGINS OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.
But if this not enough to get your blood boiling listen to this:
Andrew Klavan: Income Redistribution
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From time to time I send the local paper something I have written and they generally will publish one of my letters each month.
This is the latest one they published today and which I posted in a previous memo:
But most of all, conservatism is no longer a philosophy that sells because it preaches eternal values no longer cherished and embraced. If truth be told, even The Republican Party has strayed from its own principles and , being an old fashioned conservative, that is a fact that irritates me to no end."
This is a response I received from a liberal, by the name of Tom Oxnard, but who is not a fellow reader of my memos.
"I continue to be amazed by the bitter bile you throw at the SMN on a regular basis.
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From time to time I send the local paper something I have written and they generally will publish one of my letters each month.
This is the latest one they published today and which I posted in a previous memo:
"I am bemused by the reaction of my befuddled friends who voted for Obama, not once but twice. They sheepishly, acknowledge their disappointment.
However, though they engaged in only a smidgen of reasoning when they voted for Obama, they now seem very concerned about whom Republicans will select in 2016. I constantly hear 'yes, Obama has disappointed me but who is your party going to select to replace him?'
On occasion, the truly defensive remind me that though Obama's performance has been disappointing it is all because GW invaded Iraq, never balanced the budget and presided over a terrible economy blah, blah, blah.
It is not easy to admit a mistake. We are not raised as children to do so. We spend much of our life in denial. We look in the mirror and see someone we like,who we believe is good, has many virtuous attributes and whose judgement is generally smack on.
Liberals tend to be among the biggest abusers because they believe, so fervently, in their ideas and because they are so virtuous. After all, they care more about the welfare of others than conservatives who are constantly warring against women, taking food and milk from children and who are racists to the core. Even though liberal policies have failed to produce the results they espouse, failure is always based on not having enough money.
Thus, they eagerly bought Clinton's line about how he' felt our pain' and Obama's pitch that he would reduce racial tensions, run an open administration, reduce spending and bring our troops home.
What, of course has happened, is one scandal after another but no 'smidgen' of same. What actually happened is a greater divide between black and white. What actually happened is a total rejection and distrust of American leadership. What actually happened is a ballooning deficit, and what actually happened is a world more unstable than at any time since WW 2, while we are told it is more 'tranquil.'
I doubt liberals, who are disappointed by Obama, could bring themselves to even vote for God were he/she to be on the Republican ticket in 2016. Why? Because most liberals no longer believe God ever had or even now has anything to do with America. We have become a godless society and it is all because of GW.
This is a response I received from a liberal, by the name of Tom Oxnard, but who is not a fellow reader of my memos.
"I continue to be amazed by the bitter bile you throw at the SMN on a regular basis.
I don't know which Democratic "friends" you are talking about. As far as I'm concerned, this President is dealing with a confluence of world events which are almost beyond Biblical proportions and I am hoping you, and his other enemies, will work with him to help find solutions. Or are you going to continue to be a bitter old man
like John McCain?
As to who may be on future tickets, would you support Hitler if he ran as a Republican?
I am amazed that Tom Barton continues to publish your rantings." {Tom Barton is the editor of the editorial page of the Savannah Morning Newspaper.'
I responded to Tom Oxnard as follows: "Thanks for your missive. Me" (See 3 below.)
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1) Melanie Phillips Calls For New Strategy to Present Israel’s Case
I find it amazing that we have no strategy for the most dangerous threat our country has faced thus far this century. Strategy requires knowledge of the subject, hopefully vision with wisdom, but most of all….LEADERSHIP!
Last year, the President boasted that al Qaeda is no longer a threat because their leadership has been decimated. A few months ago, when referring to ISIS, he classified them as Junior Varsity saying, “Just because you put on a Lakers jersey, doesn’t make you Kobe Bryant.” This week when faced with the perils of ISIS he simply said, “We don’t have a strategy.” Now….that’s no LEADERSHIP!
During this period when Mesopotamia and the Levant have been aflame more than anytime in the last fifty years, our chief diplomat, Mr. Kerry, has spent the bulk of his time trying to solve the Gaza problem in favor of Hamas, not Israel. Now….that’s surely not LEADERSHIP!
Over in the Defense Department, Secretary Hagel and his chief military advisor, General Dempsey, both boldly stated that ISIS is a violent enemy that will threaten our nation and to defeat them we must carry the attack to their sanctuary in Syria. The following day (perhaps after threats from the White House) they both did a precise about face and tried to put as much daylight as possible between themselves and their previous remarks. Now….that’s sure as hell no LEADERSHIP!
In the Congress, many members from both parties have vehemently criticized the administration regarding a lack of decisiveness and our retreat from global stewardship. But, who listens to Congress? After all, they are on vacation. Now….that’s no LEADERSHIP, that’s ABANDONMENT!
Our President should take a page out of the books of David Cameron and Bibi Netanyahu: Stop playing. Go to work. Make hard decisions. And duke it out with the bad guys. We can’t help the President with leadership. He will need to find that somewhere inside himself. But, here is a strategy that will again make our nation relevant and will protect us from a genocidal, violent Middle East threat.
- Conduct a strategic air campaign that one, decimates ISIS in Iraq as they mass to attack, travel the roads, move their heavy weapons into firing positions and as they withdraw from contact. Second, take the attack into Syria and strike them violently in their sanctuaries where they refit, regroup, reorganize and recruit. The campaign in Syria should be designed to kill ISIS where they stand and in no means should it be support for Assad, the Free Syrian Army or any other group. It is to kill the enemies of our nation. It is too late to solve the problem of Syria. The Iranians have already won there and either Assad or another Iranian sponsored government will prevail. Remember Assad’s Syria is the oldest Arab ally of Iran and also remember that Syria has a 58 year old treaty with Russia. Neither Iran nor Russia will let an Assad-like government fail.
- Wrap America’s once strong arms around the Kurds. They, along with Israel, are our greatest friends in the Middle East. Give them the weapons and equipment they need to fight ISIS. They are our “boots on the ground.” The Kurds have had democratic elections since 1994; they are governed by their own constitution drafted in 1994; and are geographically in the most strategic location in the Middle East. They have enemies (also our enemies) to the east, south and west and a NATO ally to the north, which gives us great lines of communication. As an operational area this is a military man’s dream.
- Forget the lofty idea of an inclusive government in Bagdad. The Iraq we walked away from in 2011 now ideologically and politically belongs to Iran, not the U.S. If we put it back together it will remain the instrument of Iran. The new Prime Minister al Abadi will not be our friend. He is simply a new face with the same old policy, i.e., another Maliki. He is a member of the same party, DAWA; he is anti-Kurd and anti-Sunni. When the Shia-led government decided to nominate al Abadi to be Maliki’s replacement, they sent the nomination to Tehran for the Ayatollah’s approval. Note: they did not send it to Washington. Let the Iranians defend, spill their blood and spend their money in Arab Iraq – not us. The ISIS menace in Arab Iraq is a far greater threat to Iran than it is to us. For all practical purposes Arab Iraq is Iranian just as Kurdish Iraq is American.
- Guarantee the survival of Kurdistan. As stated before they are democratic, strategically located, more pro-American than Americans, and they sit on the sixth largest oil reserve in the world. They have always been our allies and one of our greatest friends in the region. We should make them a U.S. Protectorate. Better yet, for once let’s practice statesmanship and enjoin Turkey to establish with us a joint protectorate for Kurdistan which would eliminate the problem of Kurdish sovereignty, yet allow the Kurds the independence they deserve.
- Our global authority has been absent in this decade. It is now time for our nation to provide the leadership necessary to unite the western powers against ISIS, a threat that is as much a danger to them as it is to us, and perhaps even more. We must demand that the major Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, etc.) join forcibly in the fight against ISIS. If they don’t get engaged, they will also be part of the Caliphate. They know and fear this, we just need to embolden them with the courage to take action. We need to provide…LEADERSHIP!
- Keep Israel close as they are our greatest ally, along with the UK and the Kurds. And, always remember that Israel has been the pivotal point of human history for four millennia. To forget this is to take a stark look at Ezekiel 38.
- Put all available options on the table for consideration: Attack ISIS on every front – military, economic and humanitarian. Give them no relief and no respite but, never reveal what we are not going to consider and what we are not going to execute. Give the enemy NO insight into our options.
So there’s a strategy: execute an air campaign, support and protect the Kurds, forget an inclusive government in Bagdad, realize that neither al Abadi or Arab Iraq is our friend, once again be a global leader to enlist our allies against ISIS, never forget our commitment to Israel and finally don’t telegraph our plans and above all don’t announce what we will not do!
There it is. A strategy that will work and again put us in charge. We just need to find the LEADERSHIP that will do it. Unfortunately I fear that it is far, far away. God bless America.
Foley’s Sacrifice…Failure in Leadership!
It would be amateurish to believe that the brutal horror we’ve seen with the beheading of James Foley will be limited to just a brave journalist. This is a danger that is aimed at the heart of our America, it is aimed at all of us.Remember what al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS said to his US Army guard as he was released from prison in Baghdad: “I’ll see you in New York.” This was not an idle threat.
What we are currently conducting against ISIS is simply a containment operation against an evil enemy that will overcome our limited operation and eventually strike our homeland.
What we must do now is to immediately execute an operational strategy that humiliates, decimates and kills ISIS and the Caliphate they have established in both Syria and Iraq.This must begin with a dedicated Air Campaign designed to destroy these heartless bastards where they stand, where they hide, where they kill, where they breathe.
It has been reported that our limited air strikes have caused some ISIS commanders to withdraw into Eastern Syria into operational bases that allow them to regroup, refit, reorganize and recruit in relative safety. They have a safe haven in Syria and we are not attacking them there! ISIS treats Syria and Iraq as one consolidated battlefield …. we should also! There are signs that the air strikes have demoralized some of the ISIS fighters and has caused some desertion, if that is the case, just think of how an Air Campaign would affect them.
These are killers on the march and their strategic target is the United States! To completely defeat ISIS we must, as we have done in the past, form a coalition of the willing. The Europeans face as much, if not more, danger than we. In the UK alone, it is estimated that as many as four hundred British Muslims are fighting with Jihadist Groups in Syria and Iraq and will eventually be able to return to their Homeland to kill there. The European Mainland countries have the same problem.
We must join together in a coalition to collectively destroy ISIS. However, this will only happen through American Leadership.
The malignancy of ISIS was bred by the US when we totally withdrew from Iraq in 2011 and when we drew a “line in the sand” in Syria and cowardly backed away from it. These critical missteps created a vacuum for ISIS to gain strength, grow and attack . These failures in leadership made ISIS what it is today.
The malignancy of ISIS was bred by the US when we totally withdrew from Iraq in 2011 and when we drew a “line in the sand” in Syria and cowardly backed away from it. These critical missteps created a vacuum for ISIS to gain strength, grow and attack . These failures in leadership made ISIS what it is today.
The President said “there is no place for ISIS in the 21st Century”. We are in the 21st Century so what are we doing to eliminate them? The evil creatures of human history have been thwarted only when Courageous, Determined Leaders have defiantly faced the challenge and through force have exterminated them.
Today, where is that determined leader?
Today, where is that determined leader?
ISIS is on the march.
The Congress is on vacation.
The President is playing golf.
No Leaders present
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From the moment the words, “We don’t have a strategy yet,” left President Obama’s mouth yesterday afternoon, the White House has been in full spin mode trying to rationalize and justify this startling admission about U.S. policy toward the threat from ISIS. But despite all of the explanations that attempt to claim this statement illustrates the president’s thoughtfulness and the chortling of the critics, this was no gaffe in the sense of an accidental revelation of the truth. By answering as he did, the president was signaling not only how unprepared the administration was for the current crisis but his stubborn refusal to lead.
The official explanation for the president’s statement has several parts.
One is that the president meant only that there was no strategy for dealing with ISIS in Syria but that he did have one that applied to Iraq. But this is nonsensical. As much as the situations in the two countries are different, ISIS doesn’t recognize the border. To pretend that one can fight it in Iraq while leaving its Syrian base unmolested is both illogical and a demonstration of the administration’s incoherence.
A second is that the president is waiting on getting options for action from the Pentagon. If so, one has to ask whether it is possible that the Department of Defense had not prepared contingency plans for the current situation. But that can’t be true. The military has been studying American options on Syria for years, something that was again confirmed today during the Pentagon press briefing. The problem isn’t the lack of options for the president to consider. It’s that the president can’t or won’t decide on one.
The third explanation is that the president is determined that if there is to be action taken against ISIS it must be in concert with other nations in the Middle East and our Western allies. That makes sense. But the question here is why hasn’t the administration already firmed up plans for joint action? It’s not as if Arab nations that are concerned about the rise of ISIS aren’t eager to cooperate with the U.S. about this threat. It’s that the administration can’t make up its mind.
Finally, the explanation put forward by some, including MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, to the effect that the president is playing possum with ISIS by not revealing his strategy is even dumber than the White House spin. No one is saying that the administration should telegraph its moves to the enemy. But there is a difference between saying we know what we will do but won’t say what it is yet and admitting you don’t have a strategy. The former gives the terrorists something to worry about. The latter makes clear they have little to worry about.
So what is really going on?
The first and most obvious message being sent by President Obama was to his own foreign and defense policy teams. After days of administration officials signaling that action against ISIS in Syria was imminent, the president felt he needed throw some cold water on those expecting a decision, let alone, orders to strike at the Islamists’ bases. As with past deliberations about Syria, there are clearly a lot of people inside the Obama tent who realize that the years of dithering over the crisis there is damaging U.S. credibility as well as allowing the threat to metastasize. But the president may be far more worried about being pressured to act by both members of his own administration as well as political critics than he is about ISIS.
More important and far more dangerous is the message that this statement sent to ISIS.
It is true that the U.S. is already striking ISIS targets in Iraq, a move that has helped stabilize a situation that was quickly getting out of control. The president deserves credit for this. Nor should one underestimate the efforts that U.S. intelligence services are making to address any possible ISIS threats against U.S. targets outside of Syria and Iraq or to try to rescue Americans still being held by these terrorists.
But there is little doubt that ISIS could not help but be encouraged by the president’s obvious reluctance to commit to action.
Even the president’s defenders must acknowledge that the ISIS problem is a direct result of years of administration dithering on Syria. Instead of intervening decisively early in the conflict between the Assad regime and its opponents when American help could have been decisive the president chose to wait and merely called for Assad’s fall. The vacuum created by American and Western indecision made ISIS’s growth possible.
Just as important, Obama’s disastrous failure to follow through on his threat to punish Assad for crossing the “red line” undermined any notion that the West was prepared to enforce its own standards. Critics are right to note that is more than ironic that the president’s indecision about hitting Assad last year and is now behaving similarly when it comes to dealing with the threat that comes from the other side in that civil war. But the main takeaway from this disastrous day of White House messaging is that once again this president is primarily articulating his lack of comfort with a position of international leadership. This president came into office primarily determined to end U.S. involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to somehow put a period on the war on terror pursued by his predecessor. He has since learned that merely bugging out of a conflict does nothing to solve wars or the threat to U.S. interests and security emanating from Islamist terrorists. But even after his decisions and reluctance to deal decisively with the resurgence of a terrorist movement he pretended was beaten has blown up in his face, the president is still more worried about being pressured to act than anything else.
What the United States lacks today is not a strategy for dealing with ISIS, a group that must be relentlessly attacked and destroyed. What it lacks is a president who has the will to deal with this problem and a belief in the need for America to lead.
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