Will Obama come to the realization he has been consistently wrong about terrorism and radical Islam before he leaves office or is he so caught up in blaming America for the current world scene he is incapable of admitting he has been wrong?
I am repeating this analysis discussing the basis of Obama's rage. (See 1a below.)
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I have been hearing, ad nauseum, the calls for justice 'voices' from Ferguson, Missouri . Their sense of justice is hang this policeman first and try him afterwards. This is the same mentality that allowed O.J. to walk - because you are black, juries are entitled to disregard facts because of past wrongs and because the constitution does not apply.
Many, many years ago a man named Leo Frank was lynched in Ga. because he was Jewish and accused of raping a young girl and the mob chose not to allow facts to determine his fate. Many decades later a Ga. Governor issued a long overdue pardon.
I suspect we are revisiting the circumstances surrounding this tragedy because this president has consistently played the racial card, made appointments to high positions who have a racial bias and elevated, not lowered, discord between the races. This is the same president who lied to America when he said he would seek to heal remaining racial divisions and would preside over an open administration.
The more I see, the more I read and the more I learn about what is going on in this small American town the more biased I am becoming as I see the country I believe in is being wrecked by lawless mobs who are allowed to pillage because their sense of justice is not carrying the day.
I have witnessed politicians making inflammatory comments of which they should be ashamed. Perhaps one day various police departments will go on strike and then, perhaps,all this talk about police brutality and militarization will be seen in a different light as the rabble rousers and chaos takes over.
Poverty, unemployment, poor education, destruction of the family unit all contribute to rational feelings of injustice but none of these grievances sanction what is happening in the streets of Ferguson.
One day this episode will pass and perhaps politicians will gather, possibly another commission will be formed to parse the myriad of complaints and then we will return to business as usual. Sen. Moynihan clued us in decades ago . Maybe we should reread what he predicted because he was right on the mark.
Until then I will turn off my TV and lower my elevated blood pressure. (See 2 below.)
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An analysis of why Netanyahu remains a thorn in Obama's side and the dangers of such. (See 3 below.)
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America and Iran have become strange bed fellows over Iraq. How far will it go? Will Obama allow Iran to have a nuclear bomb because of Iran's co-operation in Iraq? I suspect Iran will be allowed to go nuclear regardless. (See 4 below.)
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My friend Bret Stephens and I are on the same page. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1) ISIS is to America as Hamas is to Israel
by Alan M. Dershowitz
President Barak Obama has rightfully condemned the ISIS beheading of American James Foley in the strongest terms. This is what he said:
"There has to be a common effort to extract this cancer so it does not spread. There has to be a clear rejection of the kind of a nihilistic ideologies. One thing we can all agree on is group like (ISIS) has no place in the 21st century. Friends and allies around the world, we share a common security a set of values opposite of what we saw yesterday. We will continue to confront this hateful terrorism and replace it with a sense of hope and stability."
At the same time that President Obama has called for an all-out war against the “cancer” of ISIS, he has regarded Hamas as having an easily curable disease, urging Israel to accept that terrorist group, whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction, as part of a Palestinian unity government. I cannot imagine him urging Iraq, or any other Arab country, to accept ISIS as part of a unity government.
Former President Jimmy Carter and Bishop Desmond Tutu have gone even further, urging the international community to recognize the legitimacy of Hamas as a political party and to grant it diplomatic recognition. It is hard to imagine them demanding that the same legitimate status be accorded ISIS.
Why then the double standard regarding ISIS and Hamas? Is it because ISIS is less brutal and
violent than Hamas? It’s hard to make that case. Hamas has probably killed more civilians—through its suicide bombs, its murder of Palestinian Authority members, its rocket attacks and its terror tunnels—than ISIS has done. If not for Israel’s Iron Dome and the Israeli Defense Forces, Hamas would have killed even more innocent civilians. Indeed its charter calls for the killing of all Jews anywhere in the world, regardless of where they live or which “rock” they are hiding behind. If Hamas had its way, it would kill as least as many people as ISIS would.
Is it the manner by which ISIS kills? Beheading is of course a visibly grotesque means of killing, but dead is dead and murder is murder. And it matters little to the victim’s family whether the death was caused by beheading, by hanging or by a bullet in the back of a head. Indeed most of ISIS’s victims have been shot rather than beheaded, while Hamas terrorists have slaughtered innocent babies in their beds, teenagers on the way home from school, women shopping, Jews praying and students eating pizza.
Is it because ISIS murdered an American? Hamas has murdered numerous Americans and citizens of other countries. They too are indiscriminate in who they kill.
Is it because ISIS has specifically threatened to bring its terrorism to American shores, while Hamas focuses its terrorism in Israel? The Hamas Charter does not limit its murderous intentions to one country. Like ISIS it calls for a worldwide “caliphate,” brought about by violent Jihad.
Everything we rightly fear and despise from ISIS we should fear and despise from Hamas. Just as we would never grant legitimacy to ISIS, we should not grant legitimacy to Hamas—at the very least until it rescinds its charter and renounces violence. Unfortunately that is about as likely as America rescinding its constitution. Violence, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism are the sine qua non of Hamas’ mission.
Just as ISIS must be defeated militarily and destroyed as a terrorist army, so too must Hamas be responded to militarily and its rockets and tunnels destroyed.
It is widely, and in my view mistakenly, argued by many academics and diplomats that there can never be a military solution to terrorism in general or to the demands of Hamas in particular. This conventional wisdom ignores the lessons of history. Chamberlain thought there could be a diplomatic solution to Hitler’s demands. Churchill disagreed. History proved Churchill correct. Nazi Fascists and Japanese militarists had to be defeated militarily before a diplomatic resolution could be achieved.
So too with ISIS and Hamas. They must first be defeated militarily and only then might they consider accepting reasonable diplomatic and political compromises. Another similarity between ISIS and Hamas is that if these terrorist groups were to lay down their arms, there might be peace, whereas if their enemies were to lay down their arms, there would be genocide.
A wonderful cartoon illustrates this: at one end of the table is Hamas demanding “death to all the Jews!” At the other end is Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu. In the middle sits the mediator, who turns to Netanyahu and asks: “Can’t you at least come half way?”
No democratic nation can accept its own destruction. We cannot compromise—come half way—with terrorists who demand the deaths of all who stand in the way of their demand for a Sunni caliphate, whether these terrorists call themselves ISIS or Hamas. Both are, in the words of President Obama, “cancers” that must be extracted before they spread. Both are equally malignant. Both must be defeated on the battlefield, in the court of public opinion and in the courts of law. There can be no compromise with bigotry, terrorism or the demand for a caliphate. Before Hamas or ISIS can be considered legitimate political partners, they must give up their violent quest for a worldwide Islamic caliphate.
1a) Obama's Rage
In September 2001 my daughter was a graduate student at Harvard. On the 11thday of that month, she spent some time sitting on a bench on campus, holding hands with one of her professors, while the two of them wept. Like many of her professors, this man was a renowned scholar. But unlike most, he came from a tough neighborhood in the Bronx. When phone service was restored to the West Coast, my daughter called. She said, “Mom, I'm so glad I was with my professor, because the people here at Harvard, they don't get it.
It's like it wasn't their country that was attacked.”
It wasn't. Decades ago, the self-amazed, academic staccato-talkers at places like Harvard constructed an edifice of convenient untruths about the United States. America was reframed as an intolerant, aggressive, and morally backward nation. This dogma enabled the elites to claim the advantages of being American while exempting themselves from any form of military service, or gratitude for the military, which provides their national security. Most of such types at Harvard consider themselves American, but special, enlightened ones; it was the greedy, intolerant, patriotic folks who were attacked on 9/11.
Harvard's currently most famous alumnus, Barack Obama, takes anti-American dogma one step further into an idée fixe. He suffers a delusion within the illusion of American perfidy, a fixed, fervent ideological system against an imaginary evil white patriarchy. And the face of his “singular fixation of the intellect” has been George W. Bush. On the level of the heart, Obama has no country. Not only does he not identify with the people who died on 9/11, but to a degree beyond most left-wing elites, he is sympathetic to the Islamists who killed them.
Imagine if during World War II American soldiers had fought and died in order to capture five ace Luftwaffe pilots. Then President Roosevelt ordered the pilots to be sent back to the Nazis so they could resume dropping bombs. That is exactly what Obama did against America in the Bergdahl “swap.” It was a treasonous act expressing the rage he carries, which he focuses against Bush's war on terrorism.
Charles Krauthammer explains Obama as the President who wants to end war. But the organizing principle of Obama's military policy is to end the Iraq war in defeat for America. Obama is driven by an obsessive resentment, conscious and unconscious, against a delusional evil white patriarchy, which causes him to help America's enemies. Above all, Obama was driven to lose the war in Iraq to claim victory over Bush, the ideal foil for his idée fixe.
The concept of the idée fixe was the forerunner of the condition called obsession. An idée fixe can form when the vulnerable ego of a child or adult is shocked and humiliated by mistreatment or abuse. The ego experiences rage and powerlessness, and is unable to make sense of and reintegrate beyond the abuse.
Psychological energy can reorient around an idée fixe, in this case a transference of rage away from the actual abuser(s), onto a safer psychological object. Also, unlike obsession where there may be some insight and motivation to break free, the fixedly prejudiced mind does not question itself, but devotes energy and resources to the delusion. Relationships and responsibilities apart from the idée fixe are neglected in the self-deception that when the enemy is conquered, every problem will be solved. The pathological aspects of the President’s idée fixe involve anti-white racism and anti-father psychology, both typified by Bush.
The greatest threat to American-style socialism is a Godful father in the home. The last two Democratic Presidents had no such fathers. There is strong evidence that both Presidents Clinton and Obama suffered childhood abuse resulting from unstable, toxic parenting. These kinds of childhoods are being inflicted on more and more American children as socialist progressivism moves authority and responsibility from parents, especially fathers, to government. Of all the sequelae of child abuse, the most intense is the rage formed in the mind of a boy who has been sexually mistreated. Clinton took out his rage against women. But as reckless and cruel as his behavior was, it did not influence his foreign or domestic policy. Obama's rage is cathected against an irrational stereotype of white patriarchy, personified by Bush. Obama's idée fixe strongly influences his policies, especially his role as Commander in Chief.
Wealth corrupts and corruption spawns self-justifying ideology. The princes of the world held aloft by divine rights were not known for their moral rectitude or selfless service. The American baby boom generation has been decried as the me generation, the generation of narcissists. That is primarily because scientific and technological advances, actualized by free enterprise and victory in war, enabled the first generation in human history to emulate princes: overthrow their fathers, place themselves above patriotism and military service, pursue their own passions, and find their own psyches to be very important. Like many analysands who enter analysis to explore grievances against their parents, the post-war intellectual elites developed a severe case of false memory syndrome regarding American history, which fueled progressive ideology
Obama’s childhood set the stage for transference of rage against the parents and parent figures who abandoned, rejected and abused him to anti-white, anti-father ideology. Obama’s poppa, Barack Sr., was a rolling stone. Wherever he laid his hat he left an abandoned son. And when he died all he left them was drunken, racist, Communism.
Obama was literally conceived in racist ideology. His unwed, teenage mother represented the avant-garde of the racism that says it is liberation for white girls to have sex with older black men. According to Dinesh D’Souza, Obama’s “swinger” mother was so strongly anti-American and sympathetic to communism, she sent her son back to Hawaii rather than have him influenced by his step-father who worked for American oil interests.
Then there is the creepy commie, Frank Marshall Davis, who some believe is the President’s actual father. Regarding the psychogenesis of rage, Davis’s pornography work, sex obsession, and barely fictionalized erotic writings about underagers like Obama’s mother were more harmful to the boy than Davis’s activist communism.
The worst impediments to the realization of legal rights in American history have been variations of racism. In the 1800s, “one drop” of Negro blood tainted a person. Today at Harvard, one drop of non-white blood is an advantage. Elizabeth Warren gained special recognition there based on her claim of Native American ancestry. This wave of anti-white favoritism reached its zenith at America’s most influential university -- and set Obama on course to the presidency.
The anti-father bias of progressivism is a subtler element of Obama’s idée fixe. It is a psychopathologic development of late 20th-century progressivism. For example, if John Kennedy, Jr. had lived to seek political office, his paternal background would have been idealized and his family’s wealth would never have been criticized. George W. Bush, on the other hand, was the idiot child with a legacy education bought by wealthy carpetbaggers. That’s how the left wing rolls.
A person suffering an idée fixe such as Obama’s tends to associate with surrogate rage enactors. Obama’s years of dependence on Bill Ayers and his family was at its deepest level a symbiosis of exhilarating, smug anti-American rage. Of the millions of young people protesting the war in Vietnam, Bill Ayers was the leader of a handful of extreme, conscienceless murderers. That is why Obama dug him. Ayers concocted the myth of Obama by ghostwriting Dreams from My Father. Ayers admits he spun the tales about a plucky, brilliant lad who overcomes racism to work for unity and freedom for all.
There is a direct line between Ayers and the ISIS fighters who won Obama’s victory over George W. Bush. Obama feels safe, energized, and vindicated by radically violent men, as he plays Kumbaya golfer. President Obama declared victory in Iraq because he has indeed won his war against George W. Bush. After the declaration he made a triumphal march to Martha’s Vineyard in his ideological home state of Massachusetts. Genocidal campaigns, rapes, and children’s heads on stakes will not dampen his satisfaction in winning the only military victory he has really sought.
I am grateful for the education my daughter received at Harvard. I pray that the most brilliant people wake up from their illusions and support the military to which they owe their freedom. I pray they cleanse their hearts of unjust blame and that they imagine what will happen to the world if the light of American courage goes dark.
The concept of the idée fixe was the forerunner of the condition called obsession. An idée fixe can form when the vulnerable ego of a child or adult is shocked and humiliated by mistreatment or abuse. The ego experiences rage and powerlessness, and is unable to make sense of and reintegrate beyond the abuse.
Psychological energy can reorient around an idée fixe, in this case a transference of rage away from the actual abuser(s), onto a safer psychological object. Also, unlike obsession where there may be some insight and motivation to break free, the fixedly prejudiced mind does not question itself, but devotes energy and resources to the delusion. Relationships and responsibilities apart from the idée fixe are neglected in the self-deception that when the enemy is conquered, every problem will be solved. The pathological aspects of the President’s idée fixe involve anti-white racism and anti-father psychology, both typified by Bush.
The greatest threat to American-style socialism is a Godful father in the home. The last two Democratic Presidents had no such fathers. There is strong evidence that both Presidents Clinton and Obama suffered childhood abuse resulting from unstable, toxic parenting. These kinds of childhoods are being inflicted on more and more American children as socialist progressivism moves authority and responsibility from parents, especially fathers, to government. Of all the sequelae of child abuse, the most intense is the rage formed in the mind of a boy who has been sexually mistreated. Clinton took out his rage against women. But as reckless and cruel as his behavior was, it did not influence his foreign or domestic policy. Obama's rage is cathected against an irrational stereotype of white patriarchy, personified by Bush. Obama's idée fixe strongly influences his policies, especially his role as Commander in Chief.
Wealth corrupts and corruption spawns self-justifying ideology. The princes of the world held aloft by divine rights were not known for their moral rectitude or selfless service. The American baby boom generation has been decried as the me generation, the generation of narcissists. That is primarily because scientific and technological advances, actualized by free enterprise and victory in war, enabled the first generation in human history to emulate princes: overthrow their fathers, place themselves above patriotism and military service, pursue their own passions, and find their own psyches to be very important. Like many analysands who enter analysis to explore grievances against their parents, the post-war intellectual elites developed a severe case of false memory syndrome regarding American history, which fueled progressive ideology
Obama’s childhood set the stage for transference of rage against the parents and parent figures who abandoned, rejected and abused him to anti-white, anti-father ideology. Obama’s poppa, Barack Sr., was a rolling stone. Wherever he laid his hat he left an abandoned son. And when he died all he left them was drunken, racist, Communism.
Obama was literally conceived in racist ideology. His unwed, teenage mother represented the avant-garde of the racism that says it is liberation for white girls to have sex with older black men. According to Dinesh D’Souza, Obama’s “swinger” mother was so strongly anti-American and sympathetic to communism, she sent her son back to Hawaii rather than have him influenced by his step-father who worked for American oil interests.
Then there is the creepy commie, Frank Marshall Davis, who some believe is the President’s actual father. Regarding the psychogenesis of rage, Davis’s pornography work, sex obsession, and barely fictionalized erotic writings about underagers like Obama’s mother were more harmful to the boy than Davis’s activist communism.
The worst impediments to the realization of legal rights in American history have been variations of racism. In the 1800s, “one drop” of Negro blood tainted a person. Today at Harvard, one drop of non-white blood is an advantage. Elizabeth Warren gained special recognition there based on her claim of Native American ancestry. This wave of anti-white favoritism reached its zenith at America’s most influential university -- and set Obama on course to the presidency.
The anti-father bias of progressivism is a subtler element of Obama’s idée fixe. It is a psychopathologic development of late 20th-century progressivism. For example, if John Kennedy, Jr. had lived to seek political office, his paternal background would have been idealized and his family’s wealth would never have been criticized. George W. Bush, on the other hand, was the idiot child with a legacy education bought by wealthy carpetbaggers. That’s how the left wing rolls.
A person suffering an idée fixe such as Obama’s tends to associate with surrogate rage enactors. Obama’s years of dependence on Bill Ayers and his family was at its deepest level a symbiosis of exhilarating, smug anti-American rage. Of the millions of young people protesting the war in Vietnam, Bill Ayers was the leader of a handful of extreme, conscienceless murderers. That is why Obama dug him. Ayers concocted the myth of Obama by ghostwriting Dreams from My Father. Ayers admits he spun the tales about a plucky, brilliant lad who overcomes racism to work for unity and freedom for all.
There is a direct line between Ayers and the ISIS fighters who won Obama’s victory over George W. Bush. Obama feels safe, energized, and vindicated by radically violent men, as he plays Kumbaya golfer. President Obama declared victory in Iraq because he has indeed won his war against George W. Bush. After the declaration he made a triumphal march to Martha’s Vineyard in his ideological home state of Massachusetts. Genocidal campaigns, rapes, and children’s heads on stakes will not dampen his satisfaction in winning the only military victory he has really sought.
I am grateful for the education my daughter received at Harvard. I pray that the most brilliant people wake up from their illusions and support the military to which they owe their freedom. I pray they cleanse their hearts of unjust blame and that they imagine what will happen to the world if the light of American courage goes dark.
Deborah C. Tyler, PhD.
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2) The Media and the Mob
By Thomas Sowell
Those of us who admit that we were not there, and do not know what happened when Michael Brown was shot by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, seem to be in the minority.
We all know what has happened since then -- and it has been a complete disgrace by politicians, the media and mobs of rioters and looters. Despite all the people who act as if they know exactly what happened, nevertheless when the full facts come out, that can change everything.
This is why we have courts of law, instead of relying on the media or mobs. But politics is undermining law.
On the eve of a grand jury being convened to go through the facts and decide whether there should be a prosecution of the policeman in this case, Governor Jay Nixon of Missouri has gone on television to say that there should be a "vigorous prosecution."
There was a time when elected officials avoided commenting on pending legal processes, so as not to bias those processes. But Governor Nixon apparently has no fear of poisoning the jury pool.
The only alternative explanation is that this is exactly what he intends to do. It is a disgrace either way.Race is the wild card in all this. The idea that you can tell who is innocent and who is guilty by the color of their skin is a notion that was tried out for generations, back in the days of the Jim Crow South. I thought we had finally rejected that kind of legalized lynch law. But apparently it has only been put under new management.
By what principle should someone decide how many shots should be fired? The bullet counters seldom, if ever, ask that question, much less try to answer it.
Since the only justifiable reason for shooting in the first place is self-protection, when should you stop shooting? Obviously when there is no more danger. But there is no magic number of shots that will tell you when you are out of danger.
Even if all your shots hit, that doesn't mean anything if the other guy keeps coming and is still a danger. You can be killed by a wounded man.
Different witnesses give conflicting accounts of exactly what happened in the shooting of Michael Brown. That is one of the reasons why grand juries collect facts. But, if Michael Brown -- a 6 foot 4 inch, 300 pound man -- was still charging at the policeman, as some allege, there is no mystery why the cop kept shooting.
But, if Michael Brown was surrendering, as others allege, then there was no reason to fire even one shot. But the number of shots tells us nothing.
None of this is rocket science. Why bullet counters cannot be bothered to stop and think is a continuing mystery.
Among the other unthinking phrases repeated endlessly is "he shot an unarmed man." When does anyone know that someone is unarmed? Unless you frisk him, you don't know -- until, of course, after you have shot him.
The only time I ever pointed a firearm at a human being, I had no idea whether he was armed or unarmed. To this day I don't know whether he was armed or unarmed. Fortunately for both of us, he froze in his tracks.
Was I supposed to wait until I made sure he had a gun before I used a gun? Is this some kind of sporting contest. Some critics object when someone with a gun shoots someone who only has a knife. Do those critics know that you are just as dead when you are killed with a knife as you are when you are killed by a gun?
If we can't be bothered to stop and think, instead of repeating pat phrases, don't expect to live under the rule of law. Do you prefer the rule of the media and/or the mob?
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3) Obama's real problem with Netanyahu
Two weeks ago, Hillary Clinton gave a comprehensive interview to Mideast expert and Bloomberg and Atlantic columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, in which she expressed 100 percent (or close to 100 percent) support for the IDF operation in Gaza and the Israeli government's positions on the Palestinian Authority.
Any skilled reader could understand from the interview that 1. Clinton will be facing presidential elections in two years; 2. She is currently in dire need of Jewish donors; 3. She wants to distance herself from Barack Obama and his foreign policies.
Several days after the interview was published, I received a request from one of the more famous personalities of the American Jewish establishment, a supporter of the Republican Party. He wanted me to convince Israelis that Clinton is a liar and not really a supporter of Israel.
I had to smile. It is not every day that one encounters such a staunch Zionist, loyal to Israel to the very last drop of blood, so irate about the pro-Israel comments of an American public figure. Wondrous are the ways of the Jews.
The problem is the American Jewish activist is never alone. The Israeli prime minister's bureau is always at his side, shoulder to shoulder. Political considerations have always been a part of relations between Israel and the United States, and are certainly felt in Israeli elections. In general, however, the voters ignore any outside intervention and vote as they see fit, and in some circumstances, this has even backfired.
Netanyahu welcomes Obama to Israel, March 2013
Netanyahu welcomes Obama to Israel, March 2013 (Photo: GPO)
The first, rather crude intervention actually came from the Americans. In an old State Department document appears a telegram from James McDonald, the US envoy (and later ambassador) to the nascent Israel, who called for the newborn state to be granted an American loan on the grounds that David Ben-Gurion was on the eve of an election against his rival Menachem Begin, a suspected Soviet sympathizer. It was a demonstration of the American ambassador's ignorance of Israeli politics, but the loan was approved, and Israel saved from starvation.
Yitzhak Rabin tried to help Richard Nixon get reelected in 1972; Bill Clinton tried to help Peres in the 1996 elections; Benjamin Netanyahu has tried to help a host of Republican candidates, including Mitt Romney, Obama's rival in 2012. The warm reception Romney received during his visit to Israel on the eve of the presidential elections was a source of amusement in the United States.
In another two and a half months, US Congress will hold its midterm elections, and all seats in the House of Representatives and one-third of those in the Senate will be up for grabs. The Democrats could well lose their majority in the Senate, thereby handing complete control of Congress to the Republicans. If this should happen, Obama will be a lame duck president – the Republicans would dismiss his every bill, every budgetary decision. Within the space of one day he would become a has-been.
The Congressional elections are now the most important thing in the American political system. Each and every world event, from Gaza to Mosul, Kiev to Cairo, is measured by its potential impact on the November ballot. From Obama's perspective, this is a life and death struggle. It is for his rivals as well.
The White House views Netanyahu as a foot soldier in the service of the extreme-right branch of the Republican Party. They long ago came to the conclusion that Sheldon Adelson - the casino magnate who blew $100 million on his efforts to oust Obama - does not work for Netanyahu, but rather Netanyahu works for Adelson.
Netanyahu and Obama meeting at the White House (Photo: Reuters)
It almost doesn't matter what Netanyahu says or does, for what he is responsible and for what others are, everything emanating from Jerusalem is seen as an attempt to sabotage the chances of Democratic electoral candidates.
Netanyahu's Republican friends have a packed agenda on domestic issues, from curtailing immigrant rights to issuing gambling licenses and banning gay marriage. Israel has no interest in any of these issues, nor is it welcome to do so.
The Prime Minister's Bureau in Jerusalem explains that Obama and Netanyahu have ideological differences. Even if there's a grain of truth in that, that is not the problem. Nor is it personal. The problem is that Netanyahu has become a domestic political enemy of the president and his party.
This is a misstep of historical proportions, as it places Israel outside of the American consensus for the first time since the 1950s. This is also a problem in practical terms. Supposing the Democrats hold on to Senate control - the White House will remember where the Israeli government had positioned itself in this battle. Supposing the Democrats cede control of the Senate – the president would lose his grip on domestic issues, and focus on foreign affairs, as many of his predecessors have done.
Thus Israel would meet Obama again, this time as wounded president. After all, it has happened to us in the past, with a certain Jimmy Carter.
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4) In Iraq, the United States and Iran Align Against the Islamic State
Summary
Since June, a great deal of international focus has been on Iraq, where the transnational jihadist movement Islamic State took over large swaths of the country's Sunni-majority areas and declared the re-establishment of the caliphate. Despite the global attention on the country, especially given U.S. military operations against the Islamic State, U.S.-Iranian cooperation against the jihadist group -- a significant dynamic -- has gone largely unnoticed. A convergence of interests, particularly concerning the Iraqi central and Kurdish regional governments, has made it necessary for Washington and Tehran to at least coordinate their actions. However, mistrust and domestic opposition will continue hampering this cooperation.
Analysis
Their 35-year-old mutual enmity notwithstanding, the United States and Iran have cooperated against a common jihadist enemy in the past, such as when they worked together to topple the Taliban regime following the 9/11 attacks. Relations quickly soured again when U.S. President George W. Bush's administration declared the Islamic republic a part of the "axis of evil" and when controversy over Tehran's alleged nuclear weapons program broke out in 2002. However, these tensions did not prevent the two sides from cooperating again in the U.S. move to effect regime change in Iraq in 2003.
For Iran, Washington's decision to topple Iraq's Baathist government was a godsend; it turned Tehran's biggest national security threat into a major geopolitical opportunity. The Iranians did everything they could to facilitate the ouster of the government led by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In these efforts, the United States' Iraqi partners -- for instance, the Shia and Kurds -- had long been proxies of Iran. These two communities, which had been disenfranchised for decades under a Sunni-dominated order, received support from Washington and Tehran, first to topple the old order and then to form a Shia-dominated state in which the Kurds had considerable autonomy.
Throughout the nearly nine-year U.S. military presence in Iraq, Iran and the United States engaged in a long, complex game of cooperation and competition. At one point, back-channel talks were insufficient, and Tehran and Washington engaged in direct public talks about the future of Iraq's post-Baathist republic. Now, as the state jointly fashioned by the Americans and Iranians faces its greatest challenge since the end of the Sunni insurgency in 2007, it is only natural that the two powers join forces once again to meet the common threat. Tehran and Washington's concerns about the Islamic State transcend Iraq's borders and include common interests elsewhere in the region. The ongoing process of rapprochement facilitates such joint action. Thus, the geopolitical context for U.S.-Iranian cooperation is quite favorable.
The principal negotiators who engaged in back-channel diplomacy in Oman after the Iraqi army collapsed in the face of the Islamic State were Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iran's deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, and Jake Sullivan, adviser to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. The United States and Iran worked behind the scenes to replace outgoing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whom Washington and Tehran hold responsible for the political crisis in Iraq. Tehran and Washington have also been working together to ease tensions between the Shia and Sunnis, as well as between Baghdad and Arbil. That said, Washington and Tehran know that managing political feuds among Iraq's three principal ethno-sectarian groups, while necessary, will not be sufficient. The Islamic State poses a military threat to Iraq, and neither the Iraqi military nor the Kurdish peshmerga forces are in a position to fight back. Effective operations against the Islamic State will require Washington and Tehran to support their common allies in Iraq and engage in direct military action.
Although they are working together, Washington and Tehran cannot be seen as openly cooperating. The administrations of U.S. President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani already face considerable domestic opposition to their difficult negotiations over the nuclear issue, but the problem goes beyond that opposition. There is genuine mistrust between the two countries that limits the extent to which they can cooperate against the Islamic State -- especially in the areas of military and intelligence. Neither side wants to reveal its assets or processes to the other.
This mistrust makes it very difficult, for example, for the Quds Force -- the overseas arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps -- and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security to work comfortably with the U.S. military's Central Command and the CIA. This is why the two sides are likely to be coordinating their respective moves instead of working closely together. In fact, Stratfor has learned that Washington and Tehran agreed on the limited force the Quds Force has deployed in Iraq's Diyala province to fight alongside Kurdish peshmerga forces against the Islamic State.
While the United States deployed several hundred military advisers to Iraq after Mosul fell to the Islamic State, the Quds Force has long maintained a presence in Iraq -- one that it has been reinforcing since the rise of the Islamic State. Because U.S. and Iranian military personnel are working with the same set of Iraqi actors, the two sides occasionally step on each other's toes. Enhancing the Iraqis' capacity to face the threat requires that U.S. and Iranian personnel accommodate each other to avoid such a situation.
Though the Iranians have been running a limited number of air sorties in Iraq, the bulk of Tehran's efforts will be ground-based, whether they involve actual troops engaged in combat and supporting Iraqi forces or the mobilization of militias. The United States will largely be engaged in air operations, given the domestic aversion to sending in ground troops. This works well for both sides; the Iranians do not have the air assets that the Americans do, and having the Iranians focus on ground operations serves the United States' interests.
This does not mean that either side will get comfortable with this working relationship. However, the situation in Iraq is driving the United States and Iran toward cooperation. There are many reasons why this is likely to remain a tactical arrangement, especially when it comes time to confront the Islamic State in Syria, where the two countries' interests do not align.
For Iran, Washington's decision to topple Iraq's Baathist government was a godsend; it turned Tehran's biggest national security threat into a major geopolitical opportunity. The Iranians did everything they could to facilitate the ouster of the government led by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In these efforts, the United States' Iraqi partners -- for instance, the Shia and Kurds -- had long been proxies of Iran. These two communities, which had been disenfranchised for decades under a Sunni-dominated order, received support from Washington and Tehran, first to topple the old order and then to form a Shia-dominated state in which the Kurds had considerable autonomy.
Throughout the nearly nine-year U.S. military presence in Iraq, Iran and the United States engaged in a long, complex game of cooperation and competition. At one point, back-channel talks were insufficient, and Tehran and Washington engaged in direct public talks about the future of Iraq's post-Baathist republic. Now, as the state jointly fashioned by the Americans and Iranians faces its greatest challenge since the end of the Sunni insurgency in 2007, it is only natural that the two powers join forces once again to meet the common threat. Tehran and Washington's concerns about the Islamic State transcend Iraq's borders and include common interests elsewhere in the region. The ongoing process of rapprochement facilitates such joint action. Thus, the geopolitical context for U.S.-Iranian cooperation is quite favorable.
The principal negotiators who engaged in back-channel diplomacy in Oman after the Iraqi army collapsed in the face of the Islamic State were Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iran's deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, and Jake Sullivan, adviser to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. The United States and Iran worked behind the scenes to replace outgoing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whom Washington and Tehran hold responsible for the political crisis in Iraq. Tehran and Washington have also been working together to ease tensions between the Shia and Sunnis, as well as between Baghdad and Arbil. That said, Washington and Tehran know that managing political feuds among Iraq's three principal ethno-sectarian groups, while necessary, will not be sufficient. The Islamic State poses a military threat to Iraq, and neither the Iraqi military nor the Kurdish peshmerga forces are in a position to fight back. Effective operations against the Islamic State will require Washington and Tehran to support their common allies in Iraq and engage in direct military action.
Although they are working together, Washington and Tehran cannot be seen as openly cooperating. The administrations of U.S. President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani already face considerable domestic opposition to their difficult negotiations over the nuclear issue, but the problem goes beyond that opposition. There is genuine mistrust between the two countries that limits the extent to which they can cooperate against the Islamic State -- especially in the areas of military and intelligence. Neither side wants to reveal its assets or processes to the other.
This mistrust makes it very difficult, for example, for the Quds Force -- the overseas arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps -- and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security to work comfortably with the U.S. military's Central Command and the CIA. This is why the two sides are likely to be coordinating their respective moves instead of working closely together. In fact, Stratfor has learned that Washington and Tehran agreed on the limited force the Quds Force has deployed in Iraq's Diyala province to fight alongside Kurdish peshmerga forces against the Islamic State.
While the United States deployed several hundred military advisers to Iraq after Mosul fell to the Islamic State, the Quds Force has long maintained a presence in Iraq -- one that it has been reinforcing since the rise of the Islamic State. Because U.S. and Iranian military personnel are working with the same set of Iraqi actors, the two sides occasionally step on each other's toes. Enhancing the Iraqis' capacity to face the threat requires that U.S. and Iranian personnel accommodate each other to avoid such a situation.
Though the Iranians have been running a limited number of air sorties in Iraq, the bulk of Tehran's efforts will be ground-based, whether they involve actual troops engaged in combat and supporting Iraqi forces or the mobilization of militias. The United States will largely be engaged in air operations, given the domestic aversion to sending in ground troops. This works well for both sides; the Iranians do not have the air assets that the Americans do, and having the Iranians focus on ground operations serves the United States' interests.
This does not mean that either side will get comfortable with this working relationship. However, the situation in Iraq is driving the United States and Iran toward cooperation. There are many reasons why this is likely to remain a tactical arrangement, especially when it comes time to confront the Islamic State in Syria, where the two countries' interests do not align.
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